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Between Heathenism and 
Christianity 











Between Heathenism and 
Christianity: 

Being a Translation of Seneca’s De Providentia, and Plutarch’s 
De Sera Numinis Vindicta, together with Notes, Ad¬ 
ditional Extracts from these writers and Two 
Essays on Graeco - Roman Life in the 
First Century after Christ. 


J 


BY 


CHARLES W. SUPER, Ph. D., LL. D., 

Ex-President of the Ohio University, and Professor of Greek , ibidem; trans¬ 
lator of Weil's Order of Words , and author of a 
History of the German Language. 


“He who distrusts the light of reason will be the first to follow a more 
luminous guide; and if with an ardent love for truth he has sought her in 
vain through the ways of this life, he will but turn with the more hope to 
that better world where all is simple, true, and everlasting: for there is no 
parallax at the zenith ; it is only near our troubled horizon that objects deceive 
us into vague and erroneous calculations.” 


FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 

New York 

1899 

L. 


Chicago 


Toronto 


38470 

Copyrighted /&<?<?, by Fleming H. Revell Company 


meUh 'vtiCclIVEO, 




0-^ O v o 




PREFACE. 


It is admitted by students of history of every shade 
of belief that the origin of Christanity and its rapid 
spread over the ancient world is the most remarkable 
fact in the recorded annals of the human race. When 
we remember that it was, from the first, more or less 
closely identified with the despised religion of the 
despised Jews; that largely for this reason it had to 
make its way against a united front, presented by the 
learned and intelligent in the whole gentile world, 
while the Jews themselves almost unanimously repu¬ 
diated it; that the most efficiently organized 
government that had existed until then, was indif¬ 
ferent or hostile; that it set before the heathen 
world a condition of society in which all current 
economic ideas were transformed, and that it de¬ 
manded a complete renunciation of its time-honored 
creeds, we may well ask in amazement, “ How came 
these things to pass?” 

Second in order among the great facts of ancient 
history is the growth of the Roman Empire. Here 
we see a people at first occupying a few square miles 
of territory, compelled for nearly fifteen generations 
to exert themselves to the utmost to keep their enemies 
at bay, suddenly bursting the barriers that confined 
them and in less than half this time bringing under 
their scepter almost the whole of the then known 


Preface 


world. Rome’s conquests have been exceeded in 
rapidity, but they have never been equalled in per¬ 
manence. 

The triumphs of Christianity and those of Roman 
arms stand in a certain relation to each other, notwith¬ 
standing the fact that the latter were gained with 
material, the former with spiritual, weapons. When 
the conquests of the one were ended, the other began. 
When material forces had spent themselves, men 
began to turn, reluctantly indeed, to spiritual agencies 
and undertook to subdue the powers of darkness that 
had so long held sway in the human breast. While the 
arms of Rome were engaged in overcoming the mar¬ 
tial opposition of her enemies, Greece was occupied 
with the effort to subjugate the passions of men by the 
weapons of the intellect. By the time Roman con¬ 
quests had reached their limits it had been demon¬ 
strated that Greece, too, could go no farther. But 
Greece did not fail because there were no more 
worlds to conquer: it was because men had learned 
that her weapons were powerless to compass the end 
in view. “ He that ruleth his own spirit is mightier 
than he that taketh a city,” was the lesson that the 
best of the Greek philosophers strove to impress 
upon men, but strove in vain. 

It will always remain a matter of interest to study 
the intellectual sphere in which the old doctrines and 
the new faith conflict. What was the best that 
Greek thought had to offer to the world, and for what 
reasons did the world reject it? 

6 


Preface 


In the following pages I have attempted to put be¬ 
fore my readers a solution of some of the problems 
to which this question gives rise. No one will deny 
that Seneca stood on the threshold of Christianity, 
while in the opinion of many he had already passed 
within; yet all will admit that, at best, he fell far 
short of the standard Christianity sets up for its con¬ 
verts. Plutarch is not claimed by Christians, but he 
exemplifies many of their virtues, and commends 
many of the precepts they endeavored to put in prac¬ 
tice. These two men best represent the strong and 
the weak points of characters formed under the 
stimulus of earnest effort to lead upright lives and to 
discharge faithfully their duties to themselves, their 
fellow men, and the higher power that controlled their 
destinies. I have selected a typical work from the 
writings of both as a nucleus around which to group 
such reflections and facts as seem best fitted to illus¬ 
trate the environment in which they lived and the in¬ 
tellectual inheritance to which they had fallen heir, 
while I have allowed each to speak for himself on 
one of the profoundest problems that has ever en¬ 
gaged the serious attention of man. 

Surely, it cannot be a merely accidental coincidence 
that a Greek at Delphi, a Koman in his adopted city, 
a Jew in Alexandria, and another Jew in Palestine, 
who had been converted to Christianity and had 
adopted the profession of a traveling evangelist, 
should at the same time, yet almost or quite inde¬ 
pendently of each other, maintain the doctrine of a 
7 


Preface 


divine Providence or preach a gospel that recognized 
it as a fundamental dogma. The treatise of Philo, 
though no longer extant in the original Greek, is 
more extensive than the tracts here brought together. 
The three united in a single volume would make a 
remarkable trinity in the history of human thought. 
The feeling was evidently widespread, both con¬ 
sciously and unconsciously, that God had never be¬ 
fore been so near to men, though but a few had 
learned that the Word had become flesh and dwelt 
among them, full of grace and truth. 

c. w. s. 

Athens, O., Thanksgiving Day, 1898. 


8 


CONTENTS. 


Preface ....... 

List of the Principal Works used or consulted on 
Seneca ...... 

Seneca: His Character and Environment 

List of Seneca's Extant Works 

Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

Concerning Providence .... 

Notes ........ 

Plutarch and the Greece of his Age 

List of the Principal Works used or consulted in 
the Study of Plutarch . . . 

Concerning the Delay of the Deity in Punishing 
the Wicked ...... 

Notes ........ 

Appendix. List of Plutarch’s Works . 


PAGE. 

5 


10 

11 

60 

63 

73 

104 

108 

160 

162 

214 

218 


THE PRINCIPAL WORKS USED OR CONSULTED 
ON SENECA. 


The following are the principal works used or con¬ 
sulted in preparing the matter relating to Seneca: 

Oeuvres computes de Senbque. Par Charpentier et Lemaistre. 4 
tomes. Paris, 1885. 

Oeuvres computes de Senbque. Publiees sous la direction de M. 
Nisard. Paris, 1877. 

L. Annaeus Seneca des Philosophen Werke iibersetzt von Pauly 
und Moser. Stuttgard, 1828-32. 

Christliche Klange aus den griechischen und rbmischen Klassi- 
kern. Von R. Schneider. Leipzig, 1877. 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca und das Christenthum. Von Michael 
Baumgarten. Rostock, 1895. 

La Religion romaine. Par Gaston Boissier, 2 tomes. PaHs. 1892. 
History of the Romans under the Empire. By Charles Merivale 
7 vols. New York, 1863-5. 

L. Annaei Senecae opera quae supersunt. Ed. Frid. Haase. Voll. I, 
II, III. Lipsiae, 1871-62-53. 

The two Paris editions have the Latin text and the 
French translation on the same page. Both transla¬ 
tions are characteristically French, and consequently 
very smooth and agreeable to read. But they pre¬ 
serve few of the salient features of the original, and 
render the thoughts rather than the style of Seneca. 
To the translation is accorded the place of honor 
both in type and position. The German version 
holds very close to the text, and errs, perhaps, some¬ 
what at the other extreme as compared with the 
French. The work of Baumgarten is thorough and 
painstaking. It is not endorsing all the author’s 
views to say that it is the best recent book on Seneca 
and his times. 


10 


SENECA: HIS CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENT. 


Lucius Annaeus Seneca, surnamed the Philoso¬ 
pher to distinguish him from his father the Rhetor¬ 
ician, was born in Corduba, 1 in Spain, about 4 b. c 
—authorities differ by several years as to the precise 
date. When quite young he was brought to Rome 
by his father. He devoted himself with great zeal 
and brilliant success to rhetorical and philosophical 
studies. In the reign of Claudius he attained 
the office of quaestor and subsequently rose to 
the rank of senator. In the year 41 he was ban¬ 
ished to the island of Corsica on a charge that is ad¬ 
mitted to have been false, but the nature of which is 
not clearly understood. 

In this barren and inhospitable island he was com¬ 
pelled to remain eight years. He was then recalled 
to Rome and entrusted with the education of the 
young Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who after¬ 
wards became emperor of Rome, and notorious as the 
monster Nero. For five years after his accession to 
the principate, the young emperor treated his former 


*It is a noteworthy fact that many of Rome’s great men were 
Spaniards, while many others were not natives of the city. 
Among the former were the emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Anor- 
ninus and Marcus Aurelius. The two Senecas, Lucan, Mar¬ 
tial and Quintillian were also Spaniards. Vespasian was bor- 
at Reate; Livy, in Padua; Horace, at Venusia; Virgil, in Mantua; 
Cicero, at Arpinum; the emperor Claudius, at Lugduuum; 
the two Plinys, at Comum, etc. 

11 



Seneca: His Character and Environment 


teacher with much deference, consulted him on all 
important matters, and seems to have been largely 
guided by his advice. He also testified his regard 
for him by raising him to the rank of consul. In 
course of time, however, the feelings and conduct of 
the prince underwent a change. The possession of 
unlimited power by a character that was both weak 
and vain; the adulation of the conscienceless favorites 
with whom he surrounded himself; the intrigues or 
cabals to whom the high morality of the philosopher 
was a standing rebuke; and the naturally vicious 
temper of Nero, all conspired to prepare the way for 
the downfall of Seneca. When the conspiracy of 
Calpurnius Piso against the monarch was discovered, 
the charge of participation, or at least of criminal 
knowledge, was brought against Seneca, and he was 
condemned to die. Allowed to choose the means of 
ending his life, he caused a vein to be opened 
and thus slowly bled to death. It was his destiny 
to be compelled to take his departure from this 
world in the way he had so often commended to 
others; indeed it is probable that his reiterated 
encomiums upon suicide as an effectual remedy 
against the ills of this life, was not without its in¬ 
fluence upon his executioners. They probably wanted 
to give him the opportunity to prove by his works 
the sincerity of his faith. 

During the closing scene he told his disconsolate 
friends that the only bequest he was permitted to 
leave to them was the example of an honorable life; 

12 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


and this he besought them to keep in faithful remem¬ 
brance. He implored his weeping wife to restrain 
the expression of her grief, and bade her seek in the 
recollection of the life and virtues of her husband a 
solace for her loss. 

It was the fortune of Seneca not only to be well 
born, but also to be well brought up and carefully 
educated. That he appreciated the high worth of his 
mother is evident from the words, “ best of mothers,” 
with which he addressed her in the Consolation to 
Helvia. His father, though wealthy, was a man of 
rigid morality, of temperate habits, of great industry, 
and possessed very unusual literary attainments. 
His older brother, better known as Junius Gallio 
from the name of the family into which he was 
adopted, was for some time procounsul of Achaia, 
in which capacity he is mentioned in the Acts, xviii, 
12-17. Seneca’s younger brother was the father of 
Lucan, the welbknown author of the poem, Pharsa- 
lia. Both his mother and his aunt,—he was an 
especial favorite of the latter—were not only women 
of exalted character, but they had acquired an intel¬ 
lectual culture that was very uncommon for their 
sex in their day. 

Our authorities for a life of Seneca and for an es¬ 
timate of his character are fairly ample and have 
been variously interpreted. Nothing can be gained 
by taking up the controversy anew. To some of his 
contemporaries even, he was more or less of an 
enigma. Others, again, regarded him as a time-server, 
13 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


a hypocrite, a man whose professions were belied by 
his actions. Still others,—and they are largely in the 
majority—are more lenient in their judgment; though 
they cannot exculpate him from inconsistencies, they 
excuse them by pointing to the extremely difficult posi¬ 
tion in which he was placed during the greater part of 
his life. He has strong partisans who are attracted 
and charmed by the sublime sentiments scattered 
so profusely through his writings; his enemies, in 
forming their opinions, lay the chief stress on what 
they regard as the inexcusable deeds of his life. It 
is too late to add anything to the evidence either pro 
or contra. All that it is proposed to do in this essay is 
to place before the reader a picture of the man, 
mainly from his own writings, as the chief exponent 
of the highest philosophy reached by the ancient 
world before this philosophy was supplanted by the 
new religion that was destined to take its place 
in the thought of mankind. Seneca was next 
to Cicero, or rather along with Cicero, the most 
distinguished Roman philosopher; but as a philos¬ 
opher he has received the far greater share 
of attention. Both were Romans at heart; both' 
were earnestly engaged in the search for the 
supreme good; both were guilty of conduct incon-* 
sistent with their professions; both tried and tried 
in vain to combine a life devoted to reflection with 
with an active career in the service of the state; and 
both failed. But Seneca not only had a higher ideal 
than Cicero; he also came nearer attaining it. 

14 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


He was less vain, less hungry for public honors 
and applause, and attached less importance to mere 
outward display. As a thinker Seneca has more 
originality than Cicero, is less dependent upon books, 
knows better the motives that underlie human con¬ 
duct. “Both were essentially Homan in their views 
of life, and it is only by keeping this in mind that we 
are able to explain, if not to excuse, the lack of har¬ 
mony between what they said and what they did; 
between what they preached and what they practised. 
Like that of Cicero, Seneca’s was no adamantine 
soul, no unyielding barrier against which the vices 
of his time beat in vain. He had the Koman liking 
for what is practical. He tried to be a statesman 
and was somewhat of a courtier when to be a courtier 
and an upright man was impossible. He was no 
Socrates to whom virtue, the fundamentally and in¬ 
trinsically right, was more important than anything 
else, than all else, even abstention from the political 
turmoil of his time. 

When a long and acrimonious strife is carried on 
over a man it is evidence that he is no ordinary per¬ 
son. This has been the fate of Seneca in an emi¬ 
nent degree. During the Middle Ages, and even 
after their close, a great deal of attention was paid to 
his reputed correspondence with St. Paul. The 
National Library in Paris contains more than sixty 
MSS. of this pseudo^correspondence. That he was 
claimed as a Christian need surprise no one. The poet 
Virgil shared a similar fate; yet there is far less in the 
15 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


writings of Virgil to mark him a Christian, or rather 
as a writer who was in a sense divinely inspired, 
than there is in Seneca to stamp him as a man who 
had accepted the new faith. The rise and persist¬ 
ence of such a literature is not an anomaly in the 
history of thought. It is not out of harmony with 
the spirit of an age when the church was supreme in 
everything; when all questions were viewed from the 
theological standpoint, and when every means were 
employed to gain support for the existing ecclesias¬ 
tical organization. It was honestly believed that the 
practice or profession of a high morality, except 
under the sanction and guidance of the church, was 
impossible. It was taken as a matter of course, that 
a good man, one who eloquently preached righteous¬ 
ness, who seemed to be conscious of a struggle with¬ 
in himself between the flesh 1 and the spirit, must 
have been enlightened from on high. Given the in¬ 
ternal evidence of Seneca’s own writings, it was not 
difficult to supply the complementary external testi¬ 
mony. 

This albembracing and albabsorbing power of the 
church lasted about a thousand years and ended with 
the Reformation, though it had begun to decline 
some two centuries earlier. For this condition of 
things the Roman empire had prepared the way. It 
was the prototype to which, in part unconsciously 
and in part consciously, ecclesiastical authority was 

Seneca is generally regarded as the first Roman writer who 
used caro, flesh, as distinct from, and opposed to, spirit. 

16 



Seneca: His Character and Environment 


made to conform. Notwithstanding the fact that the 
Gospel was first widely proclaimed in Greek lands 
and the body of its doctrine formulated in the Greek 
tongue, when the church began to aspire to universal 
dominion it naturally assumed the garb of Roman 
secular authority. The Eastern Empire was regarded 
as an offshoot from, rather than as a continuation of, 
the empire that had so long ruled the world from the 
great city on the banks of the Tiber. The natural 
consequence was that the Latin language in time 
supplanted the Greek, and ecclesiastical thought 
flowed in the channels worn by the political thought 
that had preceded it. The struggle in later times for 
the supremacy of the state as against the church was 
merely the effort to return to a condition of things 
that had existed before the establishment of the 
church. The Greeks were not less patriotic than 
the Romans. The state occupied just as promi¬ 
nent a place in their minds as it did in the minds of 
the Romans. But it was their misfortune to appear 
upon the scene of history, broken up into a large 
number of small polities of nearly equal strength, and 
the Greek mind never got beyond the particularism 
thus inherited. It was their fundemental concept 
of government. Rome represented a more advanced 
type of political development than Greece, and if it had 
been permitted to work out its own salvation without 
external interference,—for the city at its worst was 
hardly more corrupt than many a modern capital—it 
might be in existence to-day. The Roman empire 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


endured so long because it was upheld by the patri¬ 
otism of its citizens. This was often narrowly selfish, 
and frequently grossly unjust to foreigners, but it 
was effectual in maintaining the supremacy of Rome 
against all attempts from within or without to sub¬ 
vert it. The Romans that were drawn toward philos- 
ophy pursued it in a half-hearted manner because the 
state occupied the first place in their minds. To 
serve the state was the ultimate goal of their ambi¬ 
tion. The emperors, even the most corrupt, still rep¬ 
resented the government and as such received the 
homage of good men. If we keep this fact in mind 
we shall be able to understand the bravery and devo¬ 
tion to duty of many of the officers and even soldiers 
in the imperial forces. More or less out of reach of 
the contaminating influences that were so powerful in 
the capital, they performed the services expected of 
them as became Romans. 

Long, long afterward, and when Rome was nomi¬ 
nally a Christian city, a German monk left its walls 
as he was returning to his northern home, a far less 
zealous churchman than he had entered it. Strange 
coincidence! The city that had become the head of a 
spiritual empire w T as no less corrupt and corrupting 
than it had been as the head of a temporal empire. 
More than sixteen centuries of experience, some of it 
of the bitterest kind, had wrought no perceptible 
change. The Christian followed in the footsteps of 
the heathen. 

For us who have been brought up in the belief that 
18 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 

morality and right and justice have a claim to our 
services for their own sake, without accessory sup¬ 
port and under all circumstances, the devotion of the 
Roman to his government, even the most unworthy, 
is not easy to understand. Rome owed her greatness 
more to the bravery of her citizens in war than to any 
other cause. To this virtue they always accorded the 
foremost place, and to those who displayed it, the 
highest honors the state could bestow. 

But Seneca was a man of peace. This fact had 
without doubt something to do in producing the un¬ 
favorable estimate some of his contemporaries formed 
of him. Tacitus, too, was not a military man; yet he 
looks with a certain disdain upon those who devoted 
themselves to the arts of peace rather than to the 
profession of arms. He regards with less favor the 
man who has wisely administered a province than 
him who had extended the boundaries of the em¬ 
pire. 

We naturally incline to the opinion that no man 
who respected himself could accept service under 
such a ruler as Nero, or Caligula, or Domitian, unless 
it were in the hope that he might mitigate a fero¬ 
cious temper or avert calamity from'personal friends. 
And yet, many tyrants since the dissolution of the 
Roman empire have been served by honorable men; 
and they have usually requited their services in the 
same way, with exile, or confiscation of goods, or an 
ignominious death. 

The readiness with which many of the best Romans 
19 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


resorted to self-destruction as a release from misfor¬ 
tune strikes us with surprise. Suicide is often men¬ 
tioned in the writings of Seneca, and always with ap¬ 
proval. It is not hard to understand this attitude of 
mind if we recollect the relation the Roman regarded 
as existing between himself and the state. The gov¬ 
ernment was in a sense a part of himself, and an 
essential part. To the Greek there was still some¬ 
thing worth living for after the loss of country and 
citizenship. He could devote himself to literature, or 
philosophy, or to some more ignoble means of gain¬ 
ing a livelihood. To the Roman such a thing was 
well-nigh impossible, especially if he was a member 
of one of the ruling families. Exile, exclusion from 
service in the state, was to him the end of every thing. 
Many Romans of whom one would have expected 
better things are inconsolable so long as they are 
compelled to live away from the capital with no cer¬ 
tain prospect of return. Need we wonder that to 
many others life was no longer worth living, and that 
they freely put an end to it with their own hand. 
Often the best men sought surcease of sorrow in this 
unnatural way. Those in whom the moral sense was 
weak, plunged recklessly into debauchery and sensual 
gratification. Literature, too, was corrupted to minis¬ 
ter to their corrupt tastes. We know little of the life 
of the average Roman citizen; but there is sufficient 
evidence within reach of the modern reader to prove 
that the ruling class had few redeeming traits. The 
downward tendency is plainly discernible in the last 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


days of the Republic. Julius and Augustus Ciesar 
were men of depraved appetites and low morals. Their 
talents as military captains and administrators, their 
patronage of letters, and their tastes as literary men, 
have somewhat put their moral delinquencies into the 
background. There is no doubt that the example of 
these and such men, accelerated the evil propensities 
to which the Roman people were only too prone. 
When the lowest depth of moral degradation was 
reached, as in the declining years of Seneca, crime 
and debauchery held high carnival in the imperial 
household. There was no wickedness so flagrant, no 
species of immorality so bestial, no deed so horrible, 
that men shrank from it. For, had they not more 
than once the example of the prince himself? It is 
sometimes charitably said that Nero was insane. 
There are men who think it too degrading to human 
nature to hold it responsible for his crimes and in¬ 
decencies. Yet Nero’s excesses were the natural 
results of unlimited power in irresponsible hands, 
when the hands were servants of a heart that was 
thoroughly corrupt, and a character that was weak, 
and vain as it was weak. The same things have often 
been repeated within the last eighteen hundred years; 
but never was vice so rampant and so unblushing, on 
such a large scale, as it was in Rome in the days of 
Seneca. 

We must not believe, however, that there was no 
decency, no regard for morality, no love of culture, to 
be found in the Roman empire even in its worst 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


estate. There were always groups and coteries of 
noble men and women who kept themselves free from 
the prevailing corruption. There was always a sav¬ 
ing remnant that remained uncontaminated. Quin- 
tillian was the center of such a group, and what he 
was in Rome, Plutarch was in another part of the 
empire, for they were almost exactly contemporaries. 
The belief in God, in the immortality of the human 
soul, and in man’s personal responsibility to a higher 
power, kept some, perhaps many, who were not di¬ 
rectly under the degrading influence of the court, or 
who had the moral strength to resist it, from deviating 
very far from the path of rectitude. There were 
slaves of whom better things could be said than of 
their masters. But what were these among so many? 

Seneca and other writers of his time frequent]}’ 
express contempt for those men who professed to be 
philosophers, and whose lives brought only disgrace 
upon the fair name of philosophy. He does not seem 
to be aware that, in a measure at least, he is recording 
an unfavorable verdict upon himself. Does he think 
that his abstemiousness, his untiring industry, his de¬ 
votion to study ought to cover his shortcomings? It 
looks so. He commends solitude, yet always re¬ 
mained in the noonday of publicity. He inveighs 
against riches, yet was the possessor of vast estates, 
and was not above lending money at usurious rates of 
interest. He teaches men to bear with fortitude the 
inevitable ills of life, and ends by commending 
suicide as a final resort. Compared with Socrates, 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


to cite but a single name, Seneca was a very un¬ 
worthy exponent of practical philosophy. The former 
took philosophy seriously, so seriously that he not 
only wanted to live for it but was willing to die for it. 
He kept aloof from politics because he felt that a 
public career would interfere with a duty he owed to 
a higher power. He, too, believed in a Providence, 
but with him this belief amounted to a conviction. 
All his reported words and deeds testify to this, while 
Seneca acts and writes as if trying to convince him¬ 
self quite as much as others. Socrates had an abiding 
faith in a personal God who not only watched over 
his life, but cared for him in death. Duty was to him 
a thing of such supreme importance that he never 
hesitated to perform it, no matter what the conse¬ 
quences to himself might be. Socrates taught nothing 
he did not himself practice; Seneca, much. Socrates 
feared neither God nor man; Seneca was afraid of 
both. Socrates expected nothing of others that he did 
not exact of himself; Seneca sets up a higher stand¬ 
ard of morals than he, under all circumstances, at¬ 
tained. His precepts are better than his practice. 
His fatal mistake lay in trying to do two things that 
have always been found incompatible: to be a suc¬ 
cessful politician and an upright man. There were 
others besides Socrates, before the days of Seneca, in 
whose life and character philosophy had had more 
consistent exponents and faithful devotees than in 
him. But when they found that philosophy and a 
career in the service of the state were incompatible 
23 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


and reciprocally exclusive, they unhesitatingly gave 
up the latter. Seneca can always admire high ideals, 
but he cannot always imitate them. He is fascinated 
when he gazes on the lofty heights to which virtue 
had sometimes attained, and he often makes heroic 
efforts to follow after; but he is only now and then 
successful. It is no wonder, then, that Socrates had 
even in his lifetime many ardent admirers and 
enthusiastic disciples that remained true to his mem¬ 
ory, while Seneca had none. 

Canon Farrar is mistaken when he calls Seneca a 
“seeker after God.” God was in no man’s thoughts 
oftener than in his. Nor has any uninspired writer 
given utterance to a larger number of noble senti¬ 
ments and lofty precepts than he. It is easy to ex¬ 
tract from his writings a complete code of morals, a 
breviary of human conduct, that would differ but lit¬ 
tle from that contained in the New Testament. He 
is a conspicuous example of the heathen of whom 
Paul says, they are without excuse. But while Seneca 
is not a seeker after God he can with justice be called 
a seeker after Christ. He is an earnest inquirer after 
the peace that passetli understanding; after that se¬ 
rene confidence that sustained the greatest and the 
least of the Apostles, and the noble army of martyrs 
no less. He lacks that Christian enthusiasm that 
comes only through faith in a living Christ and in 
His atonement. 

Seneca now and then caught a glimpse of that uni¬ 
versal kingdom which the company of believers ex- 
24 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


pected would one day be established upon the earth. 
He says, “ No one can lead a happy life who thinks 
only of himself and turns everything to his own use. 
If you would live for yourself, you must live for 
others. This bond of fellowship must be diligently 
and sacredly guarded,—the bond that unites us all to 
all and shows to us that there is a right common to 
all nations which ought to be the more sacredly cher¬ 
ished because it leads to that intimate friendship of 
which we were speaking.” 

It is hard to see how he could write the following 
striking passage without thinking of himself; for, 
though guiltless of some of the vices he condemns, 
there are others of which he cannot be acquitted. 
After defining philosophy as nothing else than the 
right way of living, or the science of living honor¬ 
ably, or the art of passing a good life, and denounc¬ 
ing the fraudalent professors of it, he proceeds: 
“Many of the philosophers are of this description, 
eloquent to their own condemnation; for if you hear 
them arguing against avarice, against lust and ambi¬ 
tion, you would think they were making a public dis¬ 
closure of their own character, so entirely do the cen¬ 
sures which they utter in public flow back upon 
themselves; so that it is right to regard them in no 
other light than as physicians whose advertisements 
contain medicine, but their medicine=chests, poison. 
Some are not ashamed of their vices; but they invent 
defenses for their own baseness, so that they may 
even appear to sin with honor.” 

25 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


To the same effect is the testimony of Nepos: “So 
far am I from thinking that philosophy is the teacher 
of life and the completer of happiness, that I consider 
that none have greater need of teachers of living than 
many who are engaged in the discussion of this sub¬ 
ject. For I see that a great part of those who give 
most elaborate precepts in their school respecting 
modesty and self-restraint, live at the same time in 
the unrestrained desires of all lusts.” 

Both Seneca and Plutarch are firmly convinced that 
man is the arbiter of his own happiness; but the former 
found great difficulty in making a practical applica¬ 
tion of the doctrine to his own case. Notwithstand¬ 
ing the sorry spectacle presented to the world by 
many professed philosophers, neither lost faith in 
philosophy. It was the court of last resort. For the 
man to whom philosophy will not bring happiness 
there is no happiness in this world. To the impor¬ 
tance and benign influence of this culture of mind, 
Seneca reverts again and again. He contends that 
“ He who frequents the school of a philosopher ought 
every day to carry away with him something that 
will be to his profit: he ought to return home a wiser 
man. And he will so return, for such is the power of 
philosophy that it not only benefits those who de¬ 
vote themselves to it, but even those who talk about 
it.” “ You must change yourself, not your abode. 
You may cross the sea, or as our Virgil says, ‘ Lands 
and cities may vanish from sig ht, yet wherever you 
go your vices will follow you.’ When a certain per- 
26 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


son made the same complaint to Socrates that you 
make, lie answered, ‘Why are you surprised that your 
travels do you no good, when you take yourself with 
you everywhere?’ If we could look into the mind 
of a good man, what a beautiful vision, what purity, 
we should behold beaming forth from its placid 
depths! Here justice, there fortitude; here self-con¬ 
trol, there prudence. Besides these, sobriety, conti¬ 
nence, frankness and kindliness, and (who would be¬ 
lieve it?) humaneness, that rare trait in man, shed 
their luster over him.” 

Though Seneca’s life was full of contradictions and 
inconsistencies when measured by the standard of 
his own writings, it would be unjust to charge him 
with hypocrisy. He was, within certain limits, a man 
of moods; a man in whose mind conflicting desires 
were continually striving for the mastery. It seems 
to have been a hard matter for him to attain settled 
convictions on a number of important questions. 
Even the immortality of the soul, a subject upon 
which he has much to say, and which to Plutarch is 
an incontestable dogma, is to Seneca hardly more 
than a hope. His mind matured early and there is 
almost no evidence of development or change of views 
or of style in his writings. He was such a man as na¬ 
ture made him, and he was on the whole pretty well 
satisfied with the product. Though he now and then 
seems to be conscious of a certain lack of constancy, 
and on the point of confessing his sins, he generally 
ends by excusing them or by trying to show that they 
27 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


are venial. Yet the fact that he at times acknowledges 
a kind of moral weakness is perhaps the chief reason 
why Seneca has been so often claimed as a Christian, 
while no such claim has ever been made for Plutarch 
who sees no defects either in himself or liis doctrine* 
The chief problem of philosophy has at all times 
been, how to make the judgment supreme in all mat¬ 
ters that present themselves before the mind and how 
to make the will carry out the decisions of the critical 
faculty. When the poet says, “ Video meliora pro- 
boque, Deteriora sequor,” he is thinking of this irre¬ 
pressible conflict. Paul himself was not a stranger to 
it, for he exclaims in a moment of selhabasement when 
writing to Seneca’s fellow citizens, “ The good which 
I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, 
that I practice.” He, too, finds within himself a 
“ law r ,” a fact of human experience, that the flesh 
wars against the spirit; that the appetencies are hard 
to reconcile with the judgment. Seneca’s own writ¬ 
ings furnish abundant evidence that many w r ho pro¬ 
fessed to be philosophers used their intellects solely, 
or chiefly, in devising means for gratifying their de¬ 
sires. To men of his way of thinking the Epicureans 
were a constant object of attack; yet the Epicureans 
were generally consistent from their point of view 7 
and in accordance w r ith the postulates of their system. 
The albimportant question with every man wdio is in 
the habit of giving an account to himself of his life 
is how to get the most out of it,—how T to formulate 
a system of complete living. If the individual is the 
28 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


goal, considered solely from the standpoint of his 
earthly life, it is evident that he will act differently 
in the same circumstances from him whose aim is the 
good of society considered as an undying entity, or 
the happiness of the individual regarded as an im¬ 
mortal soul. The disagreements of philosophers have 
always hinged on these fundamental problems and 
it is strange that so little note has been made of 
them. It is too often taken for granted that the 
mere use of the reasoning faculties, that is, philoso¬ 
phy per se, and without reference to the highest 
good, is able to make men as nearly perfect as they 
can become in this life, both as individuals and as 
members of the community. It was the conviction 
that philosophy had run its course; that it was 
“ played out,”—to use a phrase more expressive than 
elegant—that made so many of the best men, in the 
first Christian centuries, turn from it and seek refuge 
in Christianity. They had become weary of the 
ceaseless and acrimonious discussions of the different 
philosophical schools. Disgusted with contradictions 
and inconsistencies, they turned to the Gospel as 
offering a solution of problems at which so many acute 
thinkers had labored for centuries in vain. 

It has often been remarked that the Roman world 
had grown old. Every experiment had been tried, 
every theory had been suggested that might lead to 
complete living; all had ended in failure and disap¬ 
pointment for those who had the good of their fellow 
men at heart. He who would perform a successful 

29 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


experiment in physics or chemistry must see to it 
that all the necessary conditions have been provided. 
If this is not done, no amount of care in manipula¬ 
tion will bring about the desired result. The mere 
presence of the proper ingredients, however pure, 
will not insure success. So in society, the existence 
and vitality of social forces will avail the reformer in 
no wise unless he knows how to put a motive force 
into men’s minds and hearts that will induce them to 
aid him in bringing about the changes he proposes. 
Some good men have been made so by a noble sys¬ 
tem of philosophy, to the practical exemplification of 
which they have devoted their lives. Both Greece 
and Rome furnished not a few such. On the other 
hand there have been many bad men who were made 
so by following the tenets of a vicious philosophy. 

There are two reasons why Seneca has, for more 
than eighteen hundred years, engaged the attention of 
thinking men. No doubt the most important is his 
extraordinary ability. The world will not willingly 
forget the words of a great man, nor suffer his life to 
pass into oblivion. It clings to thoughts and deeds 
that are worthy to survive. Seneca not only had 
something to say that men wanted to hear, but he 
knew how to say it in such a way that they were glad 
to listen. Great as has been the evil in the world at 
all times it has never lacked many men who felt that 
they were made for something better than the daily 
concerns that occupied their time and labor. In 
their better moments they found pleasure in listen- 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


ing to the voices that spoke to them of something 
more abiding than the fleeting affairs of this transi¬ 
tory life. 

Seneca, too, was intensely human. He frequently 
furnishes evidence of extraordinary mental strength 
while now and then he sinks down in sheer ex¬ 
haustion. His mind ranges freely along the whole 
scale of mental experiences; and though he dwell, 
longest on the higher parts, he does not always do so. 
The record of such an experience has an attraction for 
many men. They see in it a counterpart of their 
own struggles, and are rarely without hope that its 
triumphs may be an earnest of their own. 

The scholar in politics is a character of whom we 
hear a good deal, but as a matter of fact, scholarship, 
in the true sense of the word, and successful politics, 
as the world understands success, are a combination 
that has rarely been made. Again, an ecclesiastical 
statesman, strictly speaking, is an equally rare phe¬ 
nomenon and has been since the days of the su¬ 
premacy of the Romish church. The greater the 
success of the ecclesiastic in statecraft, the farther he 
departed from the prescriptions of the church, or at 
least of the Gospel. How often has the experience of 
Wolsey been anticipated or repeated; and many men, 
both laics and priests, have felt the truth of Shake¬ 
speare’s thoughts, if they have not expressed them in 
his words: 

“Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my king, he would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies.” 

31 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


We still hope to find a place for the scholar in 
politics, but we have given up the search so far as 
the ecclesiastic is concerned. Yet in Seneca we have 
a man who had mastered all the knowledge of his 
time; who was by no means an unsuccessful preacher 
of righteousness, and who, nevertheless, was a success¬ 
ful courtier and statesman during part of his life. 
He might have been both to the ending of his days 
in peace, had it not been his fate to serve one of the 
worst rulers that ever lived. The secret of his undy¬ 
ing fame then is his ability and his whilom position 
at the court that ruled the greatest empire of the 
world. It is probable that the cause of his exile, at an 
age when he had as yet not written very much, so far 
as we know, was his prominence in a way that was 
distasteful to the emperor Claudius. While there 
was nothing in his past life or present conduct to 
justify putting him to death, his removal from Rome 
seemed desirable to the reigning monarch and his 
most influential advisers. But even in exile Seneca 
was not a man calmly to permit his enemies to for¬ 
get him; nor would his friends suffer him to be for¬ 
gotten. 

Notwithstanding his sudden elevation to a position 
of great importance in the empire, he seems never to 
have lost sight of the fact that he was standing on 
the edge of a precipice from which he might be 
thrust at any moment, and that he still had need of 
all the consolation his philosophy could afford. Bois- 
sier rightly says, “ Though praetor and consul lie re- 
32 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


mained not the less a sage who gives instruction to 
his age; while he was governing the Romans he 
preached virtue to them.” And he might have added, 
“ to himself,” for it is evident from many passages in 
his works that he had himself in view no less than 
others. He strove to fortify his own soul against 
temptations by giving expression to the tenets of 
his philosophy, just as men find relief in sorrow by 
recording the thoughts that pass through their minds. 
We may be certain, too, that to his contemporaries 
his speech often sounded bolder and freer than to us 
with our inadequate knowledge of the inner life of 
the Roman courbcircle, and accustomed as we are to 
the freedom of criticism to which all our public char¬ 
acters, not excepting sovereigns, are subject. They 
doubtless saw T in many of his pithy sayings, allusions, 
whether always intentional or not, does not matter, to 
occurrences to which we no longer have the key. 
And we may be sure that he was not without an abun¬ 
dance of enemies and detractors. A few of these 
have left themselves on record for us. There were, 
doubtless, also many persons who were wont to sneer 
at the man who professed to find the highest good in 
a contemplative life; in devotion to an ideal that dif- 
ered so widely from the reality in which he lived; and 
who could yet maintain his influence at a court of 
which little that was good could be said. Every so¬ 
ciety contains a certain number of members who re¬ 
gard all who endeavor to lead a better life than they 
themselves do, or whose ideals are higher than their 
33 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


own, as offering a sort of personal challenge or direct¬ 
ing a rebuke at them which they must needs resent. 
Seneca was himself conscious that his life and pro¬ 
fessions were sometimes irreconcilable. He says: “ To 
the student who professes his wish and hope to rise 
to a loftier grade of virtue, I would answer that this 
is my wish also, but I dare not hope it. I am pre¬ 
occupied with vices. All I require of myself is, not 
to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the 
bad.” 

On the much^debated question of Seneca’s respon¬ 
sibility for the vices of Nero, Merivale is probably right 
in saying that he must soon have become aware that 
it was impossible to make even a reasonably virtuous 
man out of his pupil. Under such circumstances it 
was natural for him to conclude that the best thing 
to be done was to allow the youth to indulge in pri¬ 
vate vices in order to keep him from injuring others. 
The morality he impressed upon Nero, the modern 
writer sums up in these words: “Be courteous and 
moderate; shun cruelty and rapine; abstain from 
blood; compensate yourself with the pleasures of 
youth without compunction; amuse yourself, but hurt 
no man.” This principle was a dangerous one, as we 
now know; but it is easy to be wise after the event. 
A philosopher ought to have known that it is never 
safe to make a compromise with vice. Our philoso¬ 
pher did not know it, or, knowing it, was willing to 
take the risk. 

It is doubtless some of his detractors that he has in 
34 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


mind in liis defense of riches. He can see no harm 
in large possessions when they have been honestly, or 
at least lawfully, acquired and are properly used. It 
may help us to understand his attitude in this matter 
if we compare it with that of some of the ministers 
of our own day, and with some of the ecclesiastical 
dignitaries of the past. Seneca’s philosophy did not 
come to him as a divine command. It was the fruit 
of his own cogitation in the search for the supreme 
good. But there are men in our day, as there have 
always been, who are not only members of the church 
but preachers of the Gospel, who are both rich 
themselves and apologists of the rich. Yet they pro¬ 
fess to be followers of the Son of God; of Him who 
taught that it is exceedingly difficult for a rich man 
to enter the kingdom of heaven. Seneca did not 
profess to seek this kingdom. His search was after 
the kingdom of earthly felicity, and he could not see 
why riches should be an obstacle to his entering it. 

Seneca was a good exemplar of the truth of a say¬ 
ing quoted by Xenophon in his Memorabilia of So¬ 
crates to the effect that even an upright man is some¬ 
times good, sometimes bad. His writings convey the 
impression that their author is always under stress. 
The philosophical composure of which he has much to 
say, is an aspiration and a hope, not a fruition. When 
he speaks of the passions he sees them in their intensi¬ 
ty. He seems to regard all men as either very good or 
very bad, and finds the latter class to include the great 
body of mankind. He fails to realize that the ma- 
35 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


jority belong to neither extreme. The theater on 
which lie saw the game of life played probably never 
had its counterpart in the world. He stands at one 
extreme and Plutarch at the other, just as the social 
circle in which each moved and knew best is the anti¬ 
pode of the other. Both looked too intently and ex¬ 
clusively upon the merely external. Though Plu¬ 
tarch judges the average man more correctly, neither 
possessed sufficient penetration of intellect to fathom 
all the passions that dominate or agitate the soul. 
Plutarch was most familiar with the man who is con¬ 
cerned with the ordinary affairs of life; Seneca knew 
best the corrupt crowd that sought to ingratiate itself 
into the favor of those who controlled the destinies 
of all about them, and, in a measure, of the entire 
world. Both were much in the public eye, but the 
public was a widely different one. Plutarch sought 
to make an impression by the arts of persuasion alone; 
Seneca, by all the arts that are within the power of a 
resourceful intellect. How much he was in the pub¬ 
lic eye is evident from the statement of Tacitus that 
his last words were written down and at once made pub¬ 
lic. His friends no less than his enemies desired this: 
his enemies, because they were eagerly w r atching for a 
final opportunity to prove that this famous preacher 
of an exalted philosophy would, after all, prove to be 
nothing more than a maker of fine phrases when the 
crucial test came; his friends, in order to furnish in¬ 
dubitable evidence that he had been true to his teach¬ 
ings to the end. 


36 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


It is a noteworthy fact that should always be kept 
in mind in the study of the writings of the ancients, 
and the career of their statesmen, that there existed 
no universal conscience to which men could appeal. 
Even the separate states were without any consider¬ 
able party among their citizens who shared the con¬ 
viction that there exist eternal principles of justice 
that demand the recognition of rights for all living 
beings, for slaves as well as for brutes, whether they 
are in position to enforce these rights or not. There 
was an interminable struggle of class with class, each 
striving to wrest from the other the privileges they 
withheld as long as they could, and finally granted 
only so far as they could no longer be withheld. The 
political economy of the ancients did not concern 
itself with making the public burdens bear as lightly 
as possible on each member of the body politic, and 
compelling even the most refractory to contribute 
their share; the problem was almost invariably how 
to raise the largest amount of public revenue. Only 
a part,—often but a small part, especially under the 
later republic—found its way into the imperial 
fisc. Most of it flowed into the coffers of 
the farmers of the revenue, and for this reason 
their representatives, the publicans or tax=gatherers, 
were so thoroughly detested. Their relation to the 
citizens was entirely different from the modern offi¬ 
cers of the government who perform the same func¬ 
tions. Every privilege or alleviation granted by the 
governing class was usually wrung from it by force 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


or threats on the part of the subject. Generally 
speaking, the empire was more lenient than the re¬ 
public because the emperors needed the support of 
the mass of their subjects against the turbulent and 
avaricious nobility. The spirit of altruism that is 
such a powerful force in our day is of very modern 
growth. It was introduced into the world by Chris¬ 
tianity, but its development was not rapid. Sociology 
as a scientific term is but little older than the present 
generation; nor does the study of political economy 
as a science extend far into the last century. That 
remarkable people, the Jews, have from time imme¬ 
morial recognized the claims of a brother in the faith, 
upon every other, for aid and sympathy. Their vol¬ 
untary contributions for the maintenance of the tem¬ 
ple at Jerusalem and its ritual, no matter how widely 
scattered they might be, is the earliest indication of a 
spirit of altruism, the recognition of an obligation that 
was coextensive with the faith. The Jews, however, 
made but a faint impression upon the thought of an¬ 
tiquity. This is evident from the way they are treated 
by Greek writers without exception. They were per¬ 
haps never more numerous or more influential than 
during the last two or three centuries b. c. and the first 
century after Christ, until the destruction of Jerusa¬ 
lem. Yet Plutarch, who was the most widely read 
man of his time, and who might easily have obtained 
his knowledge of their doctrines almost at first 
hand from the Septuagint, does not show in a single 
line that he ever thought this knowledge worth the 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 

trouble. When he mentions the Jews it is only 
to disparage them, and to betray the grossest igno¬ 
rance of their religion and their nationality. The 
same is true of Seneca and the other Roman writers. 
Tacitus, who professes to give an account of their 
origin and of some of the tenets of their religion, 
shamefully misrepresents both, while he holds the 
people up to the scorn of his countrymen. So little 
are the most intelligent men often aware of the 
occult forces at work in the world, and so ready are 
they to pour contempt upon everything that does not 
accord with their preconceived opinions! 

The early Christians, as is well known, were re¬ 
luctant to believe that the new doctrines were in¬ 
tended for Gentiles as well as Jews. Both the 
New Testament and some of the church fathers 
testify to this fact. Merivale makes it clear that 
Tertullian believed that Christianity must always, to 
some extent, stand apart from the ordinary march of 
events, and that the true faith could only be held by 
a chosen few. He does not intend his words to be 
understood in their spiritual significance, that many 
are called but few chosen, and he makes this plain by 
adding that the Roman emperors might themselves 
have been Christians, if governments could become 
Christian; in other words “mankind in general were 
equally incapable of moral renovation and spiritual 
conversion.” 

Though Seneca was, during almost his whole life in 
the public eye and lived amid the toil and turbulence 
89 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


of the busiest city in the world, he professed a dis¬ 
taste for crowds. He tries to dissuade those who 
value their peace of mind, but especially those who 
are truly devoted to philosophy, from seeking popu¬ 
lar applause. He loves to be the center of a circle of 
choice spirits, to associate on intimate terms with 
men of like aims and tastes with his own. It is almost 
exclusively against the vices of the rich and the great 
that he declaims. Only in “good society” is he at 
home; in fact he seems to know no other, has nothing 
in common with any other. He is profoundly igno¬ 
rant, with Plutarch, of the fact that society cannot be 
reformed from the top or from within. Yet the re¬ 
finements of luxury are hateful to him, and from 
boyhood to the end of his days he lived a frugal life. 

How easy it is for Seneca to talk, to express him¬ 
self in words whether with tongue or pen, becomes 
evident not only from a glance at the subjects upon 
which he writes, some of which are of the same tenor 
with those discussed by his equally fluent predecessor, 
Cicero, but from his own direct testimony. At the be¬ 
ginning of the Fifth Book on Benefits he tell his read¬ 
ers that he has virtually exhausted the subject. Yet 
he runs on through three more Books, apparently for 
no other reason than because he finds pleasure in dis¬ 
cussing every question that has the remotest connec¬ 
tion with the main theme. The result is that the por¬ 
tion which he considers irrelevant is almost as long 
as the treatise proper. 

I have once or twice in the present essay, touched 
40 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


upon the most prominent feature of the Homan char¬ 
acter, but the phenomenon is so important, con¬ 
tributes so much to a proper estimate of the career of 
Seneca, and goes so far toward reconciling the ap¬ 
parent or real inconsistencies between his life and his 
doctrines, between his words and his deeds, that it is 
necessary to dwell upon the point at greater length. 
The Homans were, above everything else, men of the 
world; men who laid the greatest possible stress on 
practical activity in the service of the state; men who 
were wholly out of their sphere when this outlet for 
their energies was closed to them. Greece gave birth 
to many individuals who lived entirely, or at least 
chiefly, in the realm of tlieir thoughts; or as Jean 
Paul says of the Germans, the air was their domain. 
The precincts of abstract speculation lay in a region 
never entered by a Roman. A few trod the outer 
courts under the guidance of Greeks, but not one 
ever penetrated farther. The Romans had no liter¬ 
ature of their own, no music, no pictorial or plastic 
arts, no architecture. Though so long under the in¬ 
tellectual tutelage of Greece, their taste was not re¬ 
fined, nor was a genuine love of culture inherent in 
the nation. It saw no use for these things because 
they were not practical; could not be employed in the 
service of the government. The occasional efforts of 
the emperors and of some of the leading families to 
elevate the national taste produced but meager 
results. Such being the case, what was there for the 
average Roman to do when he had become rich, or 
41 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


had no public duty to perform, and wanted to “ have 
a good time ” ? There is abundant evidence within 
our reach to enable us to answer this question. He 
plunged headlong into debaucheries so shameful 
that the modern pen shrinks from describing them, 
and the mind from contemplating them. Fortunes 
were sometimes spent on a single banquet. The 
Roman baths ministered equally to luxury and li¬ 
centiousness. In short, it seems as if all the in¬ 
genuity of the empire had at times been exerted to 
the utmost to devise new methods of sensual grati¬ 
fication. 

But lie could not indulge incessantly in baccha¬ 
nalian orgies; the jaded body needed some relaxa¬ 
tive that could be found neither in sleep nor in such 
business that could not be delegated to a subordinate. 
There he regaled himself with the sight of blood* 
The huge structures erected for the gladiatorial com¬ 
bats testify to the Roman passion for these cruel 
sports. Every living creature that could be induced 
to fight was exhibited in the arena where men and 
women took equal delight in the bloody spectacle. 
Lecky, in his History of European Morals, sets 
forth in graphic colors the pomp and circumstance 
with which these horrible exhibitions were given. I 
cannot do better than to transcribe his words: “ The 
gladiatorial games form, indeed, the one feature of 
Roman society which to a modern mind is almost in¬ 
conceivable in its atrocity. That not only men, but 
women, in an advanced period of civilization—men 

42 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 

and women who not only professed, but very fre¬ 
quently acted upon, a high code of morals—should 
have made the carnage of men their habitual amuse¬ 
ment; that all this should have continued for cen¬ 
turies, with scarcely a protest, is one of the most 
startling facts in moral history. It is, however, per¬ 
fectly normal, and in no degree inconsistent with the 
doctrine of natural moral perceptions, while it opens 
out fields of ethical enquiry of a very deep, though 
painful interest.” 

“ The mere desire for novelty impelled the people 
to every excess or refinement of barbarity. The sim¬ 
ple combat became at last insipid, and every variety 
of atrocity was devised to stimulate the flagging in¬ 
terest. At one time a bear and a bull, chained to¬ 
gether, rolled in fierce contest along the sand; at an¬ 
other, criminals dressed in the skins of wild beasts, 
were thrown to bulls, which were maddened by red= 
hot irons, or by darts tipped with burning pitch. 
Four hundred bears were killed in a single day under 
Caligula; three hundred on another day under Clau¬ 
dius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with 
bulls and elephants; four hundred bears and three 
hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In 
a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by 
Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under Trajan, 
the games continued for one hundred and twenty^ 
three successive days. Lions, tigers, elephants, rhi¬ 
noceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even 
crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty 

43 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


to the spectacle. Nor was any form of human suffer¬ 
ing wanting. The first Gordian, when edile, gave 
twelve spectacles, in each of which from one hundred 
and fifty to five hundred pair of gladiators appeared. 
Eight hundred pair fought at the triumph of 
Aurelian. Ten thousand men fought during the 
games of Trajan. Nero illumined his gardens dur¬ 
ing the night by Christians burning in their pitchy 
shirts. Under Domitian, an army of feeble dwarfs 
was compelled to fight, and more than once female 
gladiators descended to perish in the arena.” 

“ So intense was the craving for blood, that a prince 
was less unpopular if he neglected the distribution of 
corn than if he neglected the games; and Nero him¬ 
self, on account of his munificence in this respect, 
was probably the sovereign who was most beloved by 
the Roman multitude.” 

“ It is well for us to look steadily on such facts as 
these. They display more vividly than any mere 
philosophical disquisition the abyss of depravity into 
which it is possible for human nature to sink. They 
furnish us with striking proofs of the reality of the 
moral progress we have attained, and they enable us 
in some degree to estimate the regenerating influence 
that Christianity has exercised in the world. For the 
destruction of the gladiatorial games is all its work. 
Philosophers, indeed, might deplore them, gentle 
natures might shrink from their contagion, but to the 
multitude they possessed a fascination which nothing 
but the new religion could overcome.” 

44 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


How deeply the virulent poison of inhumanity and 
the insatiable thirst for blood had infected the 
Roman people is further evident, not only from the 
means employed to make these sanguinary spectacles 
as fascinating as possible, but also from the impress 
they made upon the current phraseology. Lecky says 
further: “No pageant has ever combined more power¬ 
ful elements of attraction. The magnificent circus, 
the gorgeous dresses of the assembled court, the con¬ 
tagion of a passionate enthusiasm thrilling almost 
visibly through tbe mighty throng, the breathless si¬ 
lence of expectation, the wild cheers bursting simul¬ 
taneously from eighty thousand tongues, and echoing 
to the fartherest outskirts of the city, the rapid alter¬ 
nations of the fray, the deeds of splendid courage 
that were manifested, were all well fitted to entrance 
the imagination. The crimes and servitude of the 
gladiator were for a time forgotten in the blaze of 
glory that surrounded him. Representing to the 
highest degree that courage which the Romans 
deemed the first of virtues, the cynosure of countless 
eyes, the chief object of conversation in the metrop¬ 
olis of the universe, destined, if victorious, to be im¬ 
mortalized in the mosaic and the sculpture, he not 

unfrequently rose to heroic grandeur. 

Beautiful eyes, trembling with passion, looked down 
upon the fight, and the noblest ladies of Rome, even 
the empress herself, had been known to crave the 
victor’s love. We read of gladiators lamenting that 
the games occurred so seldom, complaining bitterly 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


if they were not permitted to descend into the arena, 
scorning to fight except with the most powerful an¬ 
tagonists, laughing aloud at their wounds when 
dressed, and at last, when prostrate in the dust, calmly 
turning their throats to the sword of the conqueror. 
The enthusiasm that gathered round them was so in¬ 
tense that special laws were found necessary, and 
w T ere sometime insufficient, to prevent patricians from 
enlisting in their ranks, while the tranquil courage 
with which they never failed to die, supplied the 
philosopher with his most striking examples. The 
severe continence that was required before the com¬ 
bat, contrasting vividly with the licentiousness of 
Roman life, had even invested them with something 
of a moral dignity; and it is a singularly suggestive 
fact, that, of all pagan characters, the gladiator was 
selected by the fathers as the closest approximation 
to a Christian model. St. Augustine tells us how 
one of his friends, being drawn to the spectacle, en¬ 
deavored by closing his eyes to guard against a fasci¬ 
nation that he knew to be sinful. A sudden cry 
caused him to break his resolution, and he never 
could withdraw his gaze again.” 

The Roman people clung with amazing tenacity 
to this gruesome sport. Nero instituted, in a private 
way, games after the Grecian model, and Hadrian 
made a similar effort on a larger scale; but the public 
took litttle interest in them while sturdy Romans 
protested against these Hellenic corruptions. 

I have dwelt somewhat at length on this singular 
46 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


institution, both because it was peculiar to ancient 
Rome and because, above everything else, it throws 
light on the character of its populace. It is true 
that men of kindly natures like Virgil and Cicero 
condemned these atrocious pastimes, or at least took 
no pleasure in them, but their influence produced no 
effect on public opinion. Nothing that Seneca has 
written is more to his credit than the vigorous lan- 
guage he employs in denunciation of the gladiatorial 
combats. 

A life devoted to study and speculation was to a 
Roman citizen impossible. Cicero, w T ho did more than 
any of his countrymen to naturalize Greek philosophy 
on Roman soil through the medium of the Latin 
language, was a practical statesman. When forced 
to retire from the service of the state he longed to 
return to its labors, notwithstanding the dangers to 
be incurred. Livy and Virgil devoted their lives 
almost exclusively to the glorification of the past in 
extolling the heroes by whose toil, endurance,, and 
self-sacrifice, the Rome of their day had become 
what it was. Though in a sense living in retirement, 
their thoughts were none the less upon the state; 
their time and talents not the less devoted to its 
service. To a Roman the state embodied almost . 
everything worth living for; asceticism was im¬ 
possible for him. Even when not actively engaged 
in public affairs he found pleasure in observing, at 
close range, the machinery of government in action. 
He longed to live and move in the strife and turmoil 
47 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


of the capital. We need not wonder that Ovid, in 
exile, was ready to submit with cheerful alacrity to 
any moral indignity, and to humiliate himself in the 
dust before his emperor, would he but permit him to 
return to the city which his spirit had never left. 
Seneca’s conduct, when in banishment, was even less 
to his credit than that of Ovid, inasmuch as he pro¬ 
fessed to be governed by far higher principles. He 
thought lie was a philosopher, yet when compelled to 
live in Corsica where he had all his time to devote to 
study and meditation, he was wretched in the ex¬ 
treme; belittled himself by the most degrading ex¬ 
hibition of servility; did not scruple to stoop to the 
most shameful falsehoods and the most disgusting 
flattery in order to bring about his recall. His en¬ 
comium on solitude, and his aversion to crowds, if 
they are anything more than mere theory, are the 
result of larger experience and of deeper insight into 
the human heart. Yet it is hardly open to doubt 
that he could have gone into voluntary retirement at 
any period of his life, except perhaps near its close. 

It has been said of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, 
that his mind was more Greek than Roman. While it 
is true that he loved philosophy, and studied it daily, 
he did so in the belief that in this w T ay he could the 
better prepare his mind and heart to perform the 
duties which his exalted station imposed upon him. 
He seems never to have seriously entertained the 
thought that it was in his power at all times to lay 
down his official burdens in order to follow his natu- 
48 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


ral inclinations. His highest ideal of virtue was to 
cultivate and strengthen liis sense of duty; but this 
duty was primarily political. 

There is little doubt that the conspicuous place 
occupied by the state in the mind of every Roman 
citizen prepared the way for the deification of the 
emperors, a form of adulation that in the course of 
time wrought untold mischief, and led to the most 
abject servility on the part of men of whom one 
would have expected better things. Baumgarten 
devotes many pages to a discussion of this curious 
feature of Roman politics. In the nature of the 
case this deification had no regard whatever to the 
personal character of the sovereign. It elevated him 
to the skies, solely as the personification of the larg¬ 
est possible power entrusted to a mortal. When in 
the course of time all the functions of the govern¬ 
ment were concentrated in the hands of a single 
individual, it was natural that he should become an 
object of worship, at least in a sense, even during his 
lifetime, and as a matter of course placed among the 
gods at his death. We shall find this transition 
easy if we consider further the character of the gods 
of antiquity. They were not distinguished from 
mortals by higher attributes, but only by the pos¬ 
session of greater power. A god, in the popular 
estimation, was not necessarily any better than a 
man—he was only stronger. His good-will was to 
be gained and his ilbwill averted by precisely the 
same means that were employed in the case of men. 

49 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


The Roman gods were, in a far larger measure than 
those of the Greeks, personifications of abstract 
qualities. There was thus a wide scope for project¬ 
ing into their character the salient traits of the 
worshiper. 

The gods, then, being an abstraction, and the state 
being the mightiest visible representation of human 
power, it required no great effort of the imagination 
to regard its head as divine, in the sense which the 
Romans attached to the term. The unthinking multi¬ 
tude naturally fell in with the ideas of their leaders, 
and even the better class of men rarely protested 
because they considered the ceremony of little mo¬ 
ment, or because protests would have been unavailing. 

Strangely, too, the belief in fate, in an inevitable 
destiny, did much to paralize the free action of many 
of the bravest men. The fate of the republic, the 
destiny of the Roman people, regarded as an immut¬ 
able law of nature, the utter insignificance of the 
individual either expressed or implied, are ideas that 
figure prominently in the literature of ancient Rome. 
It has been truly said that Rome attained its great¬ 
ness without great men. Almost from its remotest 
beginnings it was like an organism in which each 
separate cell, though incapable of life by itself, per¬ 
forms its function as part of a whole and contributes 
to its life and growth. In this case the cell, as we 
may designate each individual moral entity, though 
conscious in a sense of a life apart, was powerless to 
modify the whole organism. 

50 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


To what extent the Roman emperors took their 
apothesis seriously we have scant means of knowing. 
It is well established that a few of them regarded it 
as a huge joke. But it is beyond question that on 
the great mass of the people it had a most deleterious 
effect. How could it be otherwise, when some of 
them reached tbe lowest depths of degradation to 
which human nature could sink? When the mon¬ 
arch in his official capacity was recognized not only as 
the political and military head of the government 
but also its divine head, it is easy to imagine what 
the effect of such a recognition must be upon the 
average Roman, in contracting his spiritual outlook. 
As long as the gods were mere abstract qualities, 
or even to some extent personal beings like those 
of the Greeks, there was a sort of indistinct¬ 
ness in which they were veiled that did not invite 
imitation. But a deified emperor was, or had been, 
a creature of flesh and blood; no matter what he 
might do, there would be many ready to tread in 
his footsteps, so far as they could. The pernicious 
influence of the ancient mythology engaged the 
attention of thoughtful men from the remotest times. 
How much worse, then, would this influence be when 
the vilest that tradition reported of the gods was 
actually done by men in flesh and blood. “ Like 
priest, like people,” is a true saying even when both 
priest and people are pagans. 

Aside from the restraints of religion, there is, in 
modern times, in all civilized countries, a certain re- 
51 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


straining influence exercised by public opinion that 
keeps the rich, who are inclined to a lax personal 
morality, within reasonable bounds. But so far as we 
can discover, the inhibitive force of public opinion in 
Rome upon the individual in the matter of ethics 
was very slight, especially under the empire. It is 
plain then where a debauched public sentiment 
placed no check upon any form of vice from without, 
and but few individuals yielded to moral restraints 
from within, the condition of society was such that it 
could hardly have been worse. 

We are sometimes inclined to wonder that so few 
protests were made by enlightened Romans against 
the deification of the emperors. The explanation 
may be found in the prevailing rationalism of the 
age. To the majority of those men one religion was 
just as good as another, and all religions were but 
forms of superstition. The persecutions directed 
against the early Christians were urged on the 
general ground that the failure to follow the multi¬ 
tude was a mark of treason against the government, 
and for this reason the best men were naturally the 
instigators. To perform the religious functions en¬ 
joined by the state was regarded as a mark of loyalty; 
to refuse, the badge of disloyalty. It is not necessary 
to go back to ancient Rome and to heathen religions 
to find parallels for treating the externals of worship 
as matters of indifference, or for requiring the sub¬ 
ject, under penalties, to conform to the creed of the 
sovereign. 


52 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


When we come to speak of the relation of Seneca 
to Christianity, but especially of his conversion by 
St. Paul, a thesis laboriously defended by more than 
one modern writer, we cannot do better than to 
transcribe a passage from Merivale setting forth 
clearly the courses that led men into a very natural 
error. After calling attention to the fact that both 
Seneca and Paul were moral reformers, he proceeds: 
“ There is so much in their principles, so much even 
in their language, which agrees together, so that one 
has been thought, though it must be allowed without 
adequate reason, to have borrowed directly from the 
other. But the philosopher, be it remembered, dis¬ 
coursed to a large and not inattentive audience, and 
surely the soil was not all unfruitful on which this 
seed was scattered, when he proclaimed that God 
dwells not in temples of wood or stone, nor wants 
the ministration of human hands; that He has no 
delight in the blood of victims; that He is near to all 
His creatures; that His spirit resides in men's 
hearts; that all men are truly His offspring; that 
we are members of one body, which is God or nature; 
that men must believe in God before they can ap¬ 
proach Him ; that the true service of God is to be 
like unto Him; that all men have sinned, and none 
performed all the works of the law; that God is no 
respecter of nations, ranks, or conditions, but all, 
barbarian and Roman, bond and free, are alike un¬ 
der His alkseeing providence. St. Paul enjoined 
submission and obedience even to the tyranny of 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 



Nero, and Seneca fosters no ideas subversive of po¬ 
litical subjection. Endurance is the paramount vir¬ 
tue of the Stoic. To forms of government the wise 
man was wholly indifferent; they were among the 
external circumstances above which his spirit soared 
in serene self-contemplation. We trace in Seneca 
no yearning for a restoration of political freedom, 
nor does he ever point to the senate, after the man¬ 
ner of the patriots of the day, as a legitimate check to 
the autocracy of the despot. The only mode, in his 
view, of tempering tyranny is to educate the tyrant 
himself in virtue. His was the self-denial of the 
Christians, but without their anticipated compen¬ 
sation. It seems impossible to doubt that in his 
highest flights of rhetoric—and no man ever recom¬ 
mended the unattainable with a finer grace—Seneca 
must have felt that he was laboring to build up a 
house without foundations; that his system, as Caius 
said of his style, was sand without lime. He was 
surely not unconscious of the inconsistency of his 
own position, as a public man and a minister, with 
the theories to which he had wedded himself; and of 
the impossibility of preserving in it the purity of his 
character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware 
that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth 
was necessary to men high in station; wealth alone 
could retain influence, and a poor minister became 
at once contemptible. Both Cicero and Seneca 
were men of many weaknesses, and we remark them 
the more because both were pretenders to unusual 

51 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


strength of character: but while Cicero lapsed into 
political errors, Seneca cannot be absolved of actual 
crime. Nevertheless, if we may compare the greatest 
masters of Roman wisdom together, the Stoic will 
appear, I think, the more earnest of the two, the 
more anxious to do his duty for its own sake, the 
more sensible of the claims of mankind upon him for 
such precepts of virtuous living as he had to give. 
In an age of unbelief and compromise, he taught that 
Truth was positive and Virtue objective. He con¬ 
ceived, what never entered Cicero’s mind, the idea of 
improving his fellow creatures; he had, what Cicero 
had not, a heart for conversion to Christianity.” 

Notwithstanding the many points of contact be¬ 
tween the doctrines of the New Testament and the 
teachings of Seneca, no competent judge now holds 
that he was a Christian. The wonder is that there 
should ever have arisen any serious controversy on 
the subject. The very fact that Seneca’s faith under¬ 
went no change from first to last ought to be de¬ 
cisive. He did not pass through the experience of 
conversion; he shows no vicissitudes of intellectual 
or moral growth; he never wavered in his faith in phi¬ 
losophy, and in the power of man to attain the su¬ 
preme good by mere force of will. Yet Seneca is, to 
the Christian, unquestionably, the most interesting 
personality that heathen antiquity has produced. His 
philosophy and his morality show, in a striking way, 
that a man may approach very close to the boundary 
line of Christianity without crossing it; without even 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


knowing what is before him. The best thought of 
the age clearly proves that Greek philosophy had, in 
a sense, prepared a few noble minds for the reception 
of the ethical and altruistic precepts of the Gospel; 
but it was in no sense the harbinger of its spiritual 
doctrines. 

It remains yet to consider briefly an institution 
which, while not peculiar to Rome, was, nevertheless, 
here characterized by some features that 'were unique 
in their influences for evil. Slavery rested like a 
horrible incubus upon the ancient world, though few 
persons seem to have been aware of it. It placed a 
curse upon labor and almost prevented the develop¬ 
ment of the mechanic arts. It seriously impeded the 
growth of the moral sentiments by the hindrances it 
placed in the way of free discussion, and by the op¬ 
portunities it afforded the basely inclined for the 
gratification of carnal lusts. It placed a large part 
of the population virtually beyond the range of hu¬ 
man sympathy by branding the expression of such 
sympathy as a symptom of treason. While it did 
these things everywhere, in Rome it made a people 
that were naturally coarse and brutal still more so, 
by placing 'within the easy reach of every slaveowner 
helpless objects upon which he could vent his rage, 
and whose services he could exploit in the most un¬ 
feeling manner. A lurid light is thrown on the bar¬ 
barity of the Romans toward their slaves by an oc¬ 
currence that took place in the later years of Seneca. 
A plain statement of the facts is more impressive 

56 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 

than many pages of theory. A prefect of the city, 
Pedanius Secundus by name, was murdered by one 
of his slaves and the criminal could not be appre¬ 
hended. According to law, all the bondmen of the 
murdered man, four hundred in number, were to be 
put to death. The populace, to their honor be it 
said, more humane than the senators, raised a tumult 
of protest against the execution of the sentence. 
Their sympathy availed nothing; the unhappy vic¬ 
tims were led away to die. One of the senators even 
proposed a decree that all the freedmen belonging to 
the household of the late prefect should be trans¬ 
ported beyond the confines of Italy. But the em¬ 
peror, and that emperor was Nero, more humane than 
the optimates, alleged that the laws were already 
severe enough, and that it would be cruel to add to 
their severity by fresh enactments. The decree of 
expulsion was not passed. Yet Tacitus, from whom 
this narrative is taken, a writer who never tires of 
lamenting the degeneracy of his age, has not a word 
of compassion for the unfortunate sufferers, nor a 
syllable of condemnation for an atrocious law. 

Still it must be said that some of the Roman phi¬ 
losophers, especially Cicero and Seneca, lay stress in 
their writings, upon the universal brotherhood of 
man. They have much to say about the intrinsic 
worth of the human soul. While these ideas are 
largely borrowed from the Greeks, or at least sug¬ 
gested by Greek philosophers, the Romans are singu¬ 
larly eloquent in proclaiming them. But slavery is 
57 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


never attacked by name. It is doubtful whether a 
passage can be found in any Greek or Roman writer 
explicitly asserting that it is wrong for one man to 
hold another in bondage. This may be due to the 
conviction that such a doctrine would be extremely 
dangerous among a large servile population, even if 
the government allowed entire freedom of speech. 
The New Testament is almost silent about slavery. 
Its authors did not wish to give utterance to any views 
that could be used by their enemies as the basis for a 
charge of disaffection with the “ powers that be.” 

Again, slavery in some form was universal. Servi¬ 
tude was held to be the proper condition of a large 
part of the human race. No man who lived during 
the existence of the Roman empire would have ven¬ 
tured to predict the ultimate downfall of slavery. It 
is interesting to note in this connection that Basil 
Hall, writing as late as 1828, while admitting every¬ 
thing that could be alleged on the evils of slavery, 
thought that to do away with it seemed “ so com¬ 
pletely beyond the reach of any human exertions 
that I consider the abolition of slavery as one of the 
most profitless of all possible subjects of discussion.” 

On the supposition, then, that slavery must con¬ 
tinue indefinitely, if it could ever be abolished, it 
was the duty of the philanthropist to do what he 
could to ameliorate the condition of the servile class 
by educating their masters in the principles of a hu¬ 
mane philosophy, rather than to incur the risk of 
making it worse by the suggestion of emancipation. 

68 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


If the good man is kind to his beast, he cannot fail 
to treat kindly his bondman. It does not seem in¬ 
consistent with the general tenor of Seneca’s writings 
to assume that he thought the best way to mitigate 
the condition of the slaves was to indoctrinate their 
owners with a philosophy that would accord to them 
kind treatment, rather than to seek to bring about 
their liberation. 

Besides, the slaves themselves were not often con¬ 
scious of their unfortunate legal status. The best 
they desired for themselves was that they might fall 
into the hands of a good master. That such men 
were not altogether wanting, even among the Romans, 
is evident from the many instances of rare devotion 
shown by their slaves. 

It is one of the suprising things in the history of 
mankind that the progress of the antbslavery senti¬ 
ment was so rapid when the cause of the slave had 
obtained a hearing before the bar of public con¬ 
science. Slavery had existed from time immemorial. 
The wrongs it condoned, the evils entailed upon its 
victims, attracted but little attention until the close 
of the last century. Within less than a hundred 
years after the agitation had begun there was not a 
slave recognized as such by law in Christendom. 
The contemplation of this fact may well teach polit¬ 
ical prophets to be careful in their predictions as to 
what will or will not happen in the future. 

In the foregoing essay I have, for the most part 
59 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


omitted such biographical dal.a as may be found in 
any encyclopedia, and have confined myself chiefly 
to a study of the society in which Seneca moved, 
and to a consideration of some of the leading char¬ 
acteristics of the age in which he lived. Every man 
should be judged by his times, for no man is unin¬ 
fluenced by them. It is only men of the strongest 
character that rise far above the manners and 
thoughts of their contemporaries. Seneca was not 
one of these. Though endowed with a penetrating 
intellect and strong moral convictions he sometimes 
yielded to temptations against the protest of his 
better judgment. He compelled his intellect to 
sanction or at least to excuse conduct that he felt to 
be unw T orthy of the philosophy he professed and 
taught. Yet after making all due allowance for his 
shortcomings, I am persuaded that one cannot 
long study his writings and his career without reach¬ 
ing the conviction that among the great men of 
Rome none towered above him in moral grandeur 
and but few T surpassed him in intellectual stature. 
If I may be allowed to express a personal opinion 
I do not hesitate to affirm that in the first thousand 
years of its history no more interesting and attrac¬ 
tive character lived and died in the City of the 
Seven Hills than the philosopher Seneca. 

The following is a list of Seneca’s extant works: 

De Providentia, (On Providence). 

De Constantia Sapientis, (On the Constancy of the Sage). 

De Ira, (On Anger). 

De Vita beata, (On a happy life). 

60 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


De Otio , (On Leisure). 

De Tranquillitate Animi, (On Peace of Mind). 

De Brevitate Vitae , (On the Shortness of Life). 

De Beneficiis, (On Beneficence). 

De Clementia , (On Clemency). 

Ad Marciam de Consolatione, (A Letter of Condolence to Marcia). 
Ad Polybium de Consolatione , (A Letter of Condolence to Poly¬ 
bius). 

Ad Helviam matrem de Consolatione. (A Letter of Condolence to 
his mother Helvia). 

Apocolocynthosis, (Pumpkinfication, as it may be translated by 
a parody on Deification; or we may call it Pumpkinosis to 
correspond with Apotheosis). 

Epistolae Morales ad Lucilium, (Letters to Lucilius on the Con¬ 
duct of Life). 

Quaestiones Naturales , (Questions relating to Physical Phenom¬ 
ena). This is the only work of the kind belonging to Latin 
literature. During the Middle Ages it was much used as a 
textbook. 

In the Charpentier^Lemaistre edition the letters to 
Lucilius fill the first volume and a little more than 
half of the second. The first Book on Beneficence is 
in the third volume; the remainder with the Problems 
in Physics fill the fourth and last. The smaller 
treatises occupy the rest of the four volumes. A 
number of Tragedies with Greek titles are also attrib¬ 
uted to our Seneca, probably with justice. 


61 . 


Seneca: His Character and Environment 


Note: —To translate Seneca adequately is not an easy task, 
While his meaning is usually plain, the modern reader is not in 
all cases certain that he clearly apprehends the exact significa¬ 
tion of his words when taken separately. He is thus in dan¬ 
ger of reading into them ideas that savor more of modern theol¬ 
ogy than the author intended,—a common fault of interpreters. 
It has been demonstrated that Seneca knew nothing of the 
Gospels directly, yet he has often been claimed as a Christian. 
Evidently, then, there must be a good deal in his writings that 
can be used to support such a claim. Attention has already 
been called to his use of caro. He seems also to be the first 
Roman who uses Providentia to designate an intelligent guide 
and guardian of the affairs of the world. There are other 
terms to which he gives a signification not found in the pro¬ 
fane writers of ancient Rome. 

But the chief obstacle the translator has to contend against 
is his diction. This is highly rhetorical and very difficult to 
transfer into another language, unless the translator has at 
command all the resourses of his mother tongue. Such a 
wealth of resources, I do not hesitate to confess, is not within 
my reach. If a translation is to make the same impression on 
the reader or hearer that is made by the original, it is as 
important to preserve the peculiarities of a writer’s style as to 
render accurately the meaning of the separate words. While 
I flatter myself that I have been fairly successful in the intre- 
pretation of Seneca’s words, I am not equally sanguine as to 
his diction. I believe, however, that I have in no case strayed 
very far afield and that the reading of the following pages will 
convey not only a fairly correct idea of what Seneca thought 
on many important problems, but also of the manner in which 
he expressed himself. I hope at some future time, if life and 
health are vouchsafed to me, to prepare a complete translation 
of Seneca’s moral writings. 


62 


SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF SENECA 

TO WHICH PASSAGES MORE OR LESS CLOSELY AKIN 
OCCUR IN THE SCRIPTURES. 

FROM THE LETTERS TO LUCILIUS. 

A holy spirit dwells within us, the observer and 
keeper of the evil and the good; it treats us just as it 
is treated by us. 

If you do what is right, let all men know it; if 
what is wrong, does it matter that no one knows it, 
since you know it yourself? O what a wretched man 
you are if you disregard such a witness! 

The human mind has come down from the spirit 
that dwells on high. 

Fortune exempts many from punishment; from 
fear, no one. 

It is natural for those who have done wrong to be 
afraid. 

The light is irksome to a bad conscience. 

The guilty have sometimes the good fortune not to 
be found out; never the certainty of it. 

Good precepts, if you often reflect upon them, will 
profit you equally with good examples. 

If thou wouldst gain the favor of the gods, be good. 

He adequately worships the gods who imitates them. 

63 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

It suffices God that he be worshiped and loved; love 
cannot be mixed with fear. 

What thou hast learned, confirm by doing. 

A great and holy spirit, it is true, holds converse 
with us, but it cleaves to its origin. 

Let the young reverence and look up to their teach¬ 
ers. 

How wisely you live is an important matter: not, 
how long. 

It is not a good thing to live; it is, to live wisely. 

He who would live for himself must live for others. 

He who has much covets more. 

No one is worthy of God save him who contemns 
riches. 

Dare to contemn riches and thus to make thyself 
worthy of God. 

The shortest road to riches is to contemn riches. 

Not he who has little but he who covets more is 
poor. 

Thin is the texture of a lie; it is easily seen through 
if closely examined. 

The praise is not in the deed but in the way it is 
done. 

To be master of one’s self is the greatest mastery. 

One cause of the evils of our time is that we live 
64 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

after the example of others. We are not guided by 
reason but led astray by custom. 

Money never made anybody rich. 

Why did God create the world? He is good; a 
good being feels no aversion to anything that is good. 
Therefore He made the world as good as possible. 
Quoted from Plato. 

Some of our time is filched from us, some is stolen 
outright, some passes unnoticed. But most reprehen¬ 
sible of all things is to lose it by mere negligence; and 
if you will note carefully, men spend a great part of 
life in doing evil, the greatest part in doing nothing 
the whole of it doing something else than they ought. 
Whom will you name that places any value on time? 
Who prizes a day? Who realizes that he is dying daily? 
For we err when we regard death as something in the 
future; a great part of it has already passed; the por¬ 
tion of our life that is behind us, death holds. Do, 
therefore, Lucilius, what you write that you are doing, 
husband every hour; you will be less dependent upon 
to-morrow if you seize to-day. Everything else be¬ 
longs to others, time only is ours, 

There is a great difference between not wanting to 
sin and not knowing how. 

If thou wouldst get rid of thy vices keep out of 
bad company. 

He worships God who knows Him. 

No one commits wrongs for himself alone; he com- 

65 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

municates them to others and is in turn led astray by 
others. 

Our minds are dazzled when they look upon truth. 

No virtue remains hidden, and it suffers no damage 
by having been hidden. 

Nature has given to all the fundamental principles 
and seeds of virtue. 

Nature does not make us virtuous; it is an art to be¬ 
come good. 

If what you are doing is right, all men may know it. 

The reward of all the virtues is in the virtues 
themselves. The recompense of a good deed is to 
have done it. 

Virtue alone brings lasting and sure happiness. 

He errs who thinks the gods intentionally inflict 
injuries on any one; they cannot do so; they can 
neither receive nor do injury. 

So live with men as if God saw thee; so talk with 
God as if men heard thee. 

God has no need of ministering servants: He Him¬ 
self ministers to men; is present everywhere and in 
everything. 

The gods extend a helping hand to those who 
would rise. Do you wonder that man goes to the 
gods? God comes to men, and what is more, He 
comes into men. No mind is good without God. 

66 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

All men, if they are traced to their first origin, are 
from the gods. 

Every day, every hour, reminds us of our nothing¬ 
ness and, by some fresh admonition, warns those of 
their frailty who are prone to forget it. 

Give heed to each day as if it were your whole life. 
Nothing will so much enable you to exercise control 
over yourself in all things as to think often of the 
uncertainty and brevity of life. 

You will grant that the greatest piety toward the 
gods is a characteristic of a good man; and so what¬ 
ever may befall him he will bear with equanimity, 
for he will know that it has happened in harmony 
with that divine law by which all things are gov¬ 
erned. 

No one is strong enough to rise by his own strength; 
every man needs some one to extend a hand, some 
one to lead him. 

J So let us live, so let us talk, that our destiny may 
find us prepared and ready to follow it. Great is the 
soul that has yielded itself to God; on the other 
hand, that one is cowardly and degenerate that resists, 
that finds fault with the order of the world, and is 
more ready to set the the gods right than itself. 

We ought to have before our minds some one 
whom we revere; some one whose influence makes 
even our most secret thoughts holier. 

67 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

Long is a way by precepts; short and effectual, by 
examples. 

Weaker minds, however, have need of some one to 
go before who shall say, “ This avoid, this do.” 

The community of which we form a part is very 
much like an arch built of stone; it would at 
once fall down if one did not support another. 

We are members of an immense body. Nature 
begat us as kinsmen, since it formed us of the same 
elements and for the same end. 

What is it that draws us in one direction when we 
would go in another, that urges us on when we want 
to resist, that strives against our desires and does 
not permit us to do what we purpose? 

If thou wishest to be loved, love! 

No one is free that is the slave of his body. 

We ought to live in this thought: I was not born 
for a corner only; my country is this entire world. 

The beginning of salvation is the knowledge of sin. 
Quoted from Epicurus . 

Philosophy sheds its light upon all men. 

It is so difficult for us to get well because we do not 
know that we are sick. 

It is the strongest evidence that our mind is di¬ 
rected toward its own improvement when we see 
faults that we had not before observed. 

68 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

It is an infirmity of mind not to be able to bear 
riches. 

To live right is in the power of everybody. 

The acknowledgement of a fault is the beginning 
of a better life. 

He who does not admit his proneness to do wrong 
has no desire to be corrected. You must recognize 
your errors before you can correct them. 

The ancients held the first requisite of repentance 
to be an examination of one’s self, especially since 
without this, life would not be worth living. 

There is no vice without some excuse. 

You ask me what you should particularly avoid. 
(I answer,) a crowd. You cannot with safety to your¬ 
self mingle in a large company. I must verily con¬ 
fess my own weakness. I never bring back the same 
character that I took with me; something which I 
had banished, returns; something else that I had 
quieted, is aroused. . . . But nothing is so damag¬ 

ing to a good character as to spend much time at public 
spectacles, for with the pleasure we receive vices the 
more easily creep in unawares. 

It is a large part of goodness to desire to become 
good. 

There is a certain fitness in the feeling of sorrow; 
this the sage ought to heed, and just as in every¬ 
thing else so in grief there is a proper mean. 

69 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

What fate did not give it did not take away. 

To obey God is liberty. 

No one is out of the reach of the temptation 
of vice unless he has banished it wholly from his 
breast; and no one has banished it wholly until he has 
put wisdom in its stead. 

Great is the praise if man is helpful to man. We 
admonish you to extend a hand to the shipwrecked; to 
point out the way to the lost; to share your bread 
with the hungry. 

No one ever renders a service to another without 
also rendering a service to himself. 

Often what is given is a small matter; what follows 
from it, a great one. 

When we reason upon the immortality of the soul, 
we do not regard as of little weight the universal 
belief of men who either fear or revere the gods of the 
lower world. 

That day which thou dreadest as if it were thy last 
is the day of the birth into eternity. 

A time will come that shall unite us and bring us 
into each other’s company. 

Then shall our soul have reason to rejoice because, 
freed from this darkness in which it is involved, it 
shall see the light, no longer with feeble vision, but 
in all the brightness of day, and it will have returned 
to its own heaven since it will again occupy the 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

place which belongs to it by right of birth. Its 
origin calls it on high. 

Let another begin a quarrel, but let reconciliation 
begin with thee. 

What else is nature than God and the divine reason 
that permeates the whole world and all its parts. 
Whithersoever thou turnest thou wilt see Him before 
thee; there is no place where He is not; He Himself 
fills all His work. 

Every crime is committed before the deed is done. 

The human mind has come down from the spirit 
that dwells on high. 

Believe me, the creator of this vast universe, who¬ 
ever he may have been, whether it was a god, master 
of everything, whether it was an incoporeal intelli¬ 
gence able to bring forth the most brilliant marvels, 
whether it was a divine spirit diffused with equal en¬ 
ergy in the smallest and the largest things, whether 
it was destiny and an immutable concatenation of 
causes linked together: this sovereign potentate did 
not wish to leave us dependent upon any one else 
even in the smallest matters. 

Stars shall impinge upon stars and all matter that 
now delights us with its beautiful order will burn in 
one huge conflagration. 

How often he who refuses pardon to others begs it 
for himself! 

It is base to say one thing and mean another; it 
71 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

is baser to write one tiling and mean another. 

A wise man will pardon an injury, though it be 
great, and if he can do it without breach of piety and 
fidelity, that is, if the whole injury pertains to him¬ 
self. 

As far as thou canst, accuse thyself, try thyself, dis¬ 
charge the office, first of a prosecutor, then of a judge, 
lastly of an intercessor. 

We can never quarrel enough with our vices, which, 
I beseech thee, persecute perpetually. Cast from 
thee everything that corrupts the heart; and if thou 
canst not otherwise get rid of it, spare not the heart 
itself. 

FROM DE BENEFICIIS. 

Nature is not without Cod nor is God without na¬ 
ture. Both are the same and their functions are the 
same. So, too, nature, destiny, fortune, are all the 
names of the same God. 

It is the mark of a noble and generous soul to be 
helpful, to do good; he who confers favors, imitates 
the gods. 

Beneficence always makes haste; what one does 
willingly one does quickly. 

We owe no thanks for a favor that has for a long 
time adhered to the hands of the giver, as it were; 
which he seems to have let go with reluctance and 
which one might almost say had been wrested from 
him. 


72 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 


Those favors are most gratifying to ns that are de¬ 
liberately and willingly offered, and in connection 
with which the only hesitancy is on the part of the 
recipient. 

I do not make the favors I confer a matter of pub¬ 
lic record. 

He who intends to be grateful ought to think 
about requiting a favor as soon as he receives it. 

This is the law of beneficence between two per¬ 
sons: the one should forthwith forget that he has 
given; the other should never forget that he has re¬ 
ceived. 

You buy from the physician a thing that is above 
price, life and health; from the teacher of bellesdettres, 
acquaintance with the liberal arts. Yet it is not the 
value of these things that you pay for but their pains, 
because when they are serving us they give up their 
private business to devote themselves to us. 

The sun rises for the evil also. 

God has given certain benefactions to all men, and 
from which none are excluded. 

Who is so wrhtched, so despised, who born to so 
hard and sorrowful a destiny that he has never per¬ 
ceived the munificence of the gods? Seek out even 
those who bewail their fate and who are always com¬ 
plaining, you will not find among the entire number 
one who has not experienced the beneficence of hea¬ 
ven; there is not one for whom there has not flowed 
73 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

something from the most inexhaustable of all foun¬ 
tains. 

Add, now, that external circumstances do not coerce 
the gods, but their sempiternal will is their law. 
They have established an order of events which they 
do not change. The gods never repent of their first 
purpose. 

Beneficence consists not in what is done or given, 
but in the spirit of the doer or giver. 

It is a most glorious work to save even the unwill¬ 
ing and refractory. 

The door to virtue is closed to no one; it is open to 
all, admits all; virtue invites everybody, free=born, 
freedmen, slaves, kings and exiles. It selects neither 
class nor condition, it seeks the man only. 

Nature directs us to do good to all men whether 
bond or free, free-born or emancipated slaves. Wlier. 
ever there is a human being, there is a place for 
beneficence. 

He who reasons thus (like Epicurus), does not hear 
the voices of supplicants and the prayers offered 
everywhere, in public and private, with hands out¬ 
stretched toward heaven. This could not be, nor is it 
possible that all men should have willingly consented 
to the folly of addressing deaf divinities and power¬ 
less gods, if they had not recognized their benefac¬ 
tions, sometimes given spontaneously, sometimes in 
answer to prayer, always great, timely, averting by 
their intervention impending disasters. 

74 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. 

It is easy to form the mind while it is still tender; 
but it is difficult to root out those vices that have 
grown up with it. 

It is a great thing to know when to speak and when 
to be silent. 

The vices of others we have before our eyes; our 
own, behind our backs. 

Use your ears oftener than your tongue. 

Nothing is more out of place in him who is in¬ 
flicting punishment than anger. 

It is not the issue of a thing that ought to be 
taken into account, but the purpose. 

Every crime is committed before the deed is done. 

To cupidity nothing is enough; to nature even a 
little is enough. 

Vice takes possession of us unconsciously; virtue 
is difficult to find, and we need a guide and teacher. 
Vices are learned without a teacher. 

Stars shall impinge upon stars and all matter that 
now delights us with its beautiful order shall burn 
in one huge conflagration. 

All that is best can neither be given to men nor 
taken from them. 

There are two things, the most precious of all, 
that attend us whithersoever we turn our steps: com¬ 
mon nature and personal virtue. These things are 

75 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

bo, believe me, because they were so willed by the 
creator of the universe, whether it is that God who 
controls everything, or incorporeal reason, the artifi¬ 
cer of great works, or the divine spirit that pervades 
equally the greatest and the smallest things. 

If the dead have any feeling, the soul of my 
brother, now set free from a long imprisonment, is at 
length in the full enjoyment of his freedom and his 
majority; lie beholds with delight the nature of 
things and looks down upon human affairs from his 
high abode; but things divine, the causes of which 
he so long sought out in vain, he now beholds at 
close range. Why then do I pine away in sorrow for 
him who is either blessed or not all? To mourn for 
one who is in bliss is envy; for one who is not, folly. 

Borne on high, he soars among beatified spirits, 
and a sanctified company welcomes him — the 
Scipios, the Catos, released by the beneficence of 
death. There thy father devotes himself to his 
grandson, resplendent in the new light even though 
in that place all are known to each. He explains to 
him the motions of the stars around him; not from 
conjectures, but, versed in the knowledge of all things, 
he gladly inducts him into the arcana of nature. 

If you will believe those who have looked more 
deeply into the truth, our whole life is a punish¬ 
ment. 

For those who sail this sea so stormy, so exposed to 
every tempest, there is no harbor except death. 

76 


Selections from the Writings of Seneca 

He now enjoys a serene and cloudless heaven. 
From this humble and low abode, he has sped swiftly 
into that region, wherever it may be, where souls, 
freed from their chains, are received into the abode of 
the blest. He now roams about at will, and beholds 
with supremest delight all that is good in the uni¬ 
verse. . . . He has not left us; he has gone 

before. 




77 


DE PROVIDENTIA S1VE QUARE ALIQUA IN* 
COMMODA BONIS VIRIS ACCIDANT 
CUM PROVIDENTIA SIT. 


Note: —This monograph is addressed to the same Lucilius, 
procurator of Sicily, to whom Seneca also dedicates his letters 
and his Problems in Physics. The date of composition is not 
known, but it probably belongs to the later years of the 
author’s life. The opening sentences seem to make it a part of 
a larger work on ethics, or rather of a theodicy, which was either 
never completed or has not come down to us. This is a serious 
loss both to us and to Seneca: to us, because such a work would 
doubtless have placed before us a complete theory of human 
conduct as conceived by a man who was thoroughly conver¬ 
sant with the motives that dominate men; to Seneca, because 
it would in all probability have explained if not justified some of 
the inconsistencies that have so sadly marred his career. In¬ 
deed the fundamental proposition of the essay is inconsistent, 
since the conclusion does not follow from the premises. For if 
the patient endurance of tribulation is the supreme test of a , 
good man, how is he justified in avoiding that test, as our author 
proposes, by taking his own life? 

I. 

You have asked me, Lucilius, why it is, if the 
world is governed by a Providence, that so many mis¬ 
fortunes befall good men. To this an answer would 
more properly be given in a work in which I should 
undertake to prove that a Providence presides over 
the affairs of men, and that God dwells among us. 
But since you deem it best to take a small portion of 
the whole subject, and to settle this single disputed 

question, the main proposition meanwhile being left 

78 


De Providentia 


untouched, I shall undertake a case of little difficulty: 
I shall plead the cause of the gods. 

2. It is superfluous to show at the present time 
that so great a work does not stand fast and firm 
without an overseer; that the regular course of the 
heavenly bodies is not a fortuitous concourse of atoms; 
that those objects which chance puts in motion are 
subject to frequent disturbances and sudden col¬ 
lisions; that this harmonious velocity is under the 
sway of an eternal law governing everything on land 
and sea, no less than the brilliant luminaries which 
shine according to a prearranged plan; that this order 
is not the result of elements moving about at ran¬ 
dom, neither can fortuitous aggregations of matter 
cohere with such art that the immense mass of the 
earth remains motionless while beholding the rapid 
gyrations of the heavenly bodies about itself; that 
the seas poured into the valleys to fructify the soil 
never feel any increase from rivers; or that enor¬ 
mous vegetation grows from the minutest seeds. 

3. Not even those things that appear to be uncer¬ 
tain and without regularity—I mean rains and clouds 
and the bolts of lightning darting from the clouds, 
and fires poured from the cleft summits of mountains, 
and the quakings of the tottering ground, and such 
other disturbances of the earth about us—are with¬ 
out a rational explanation, unforeseen though they 
be. These things, too, have their causes, not less 
those which, when they appear in unexpected places, 
are regarded as prodigies, such as warm springs among 

79 


De Providentia 


the billows or new insular lands rising up in the vast 
expanse of the sea. 

4. Moreover, if one has observed the beach laid 
bare by the waves of the retiring sea and covered 
again within a brief space of time, does he believe 
that the waves have been contracted and drawn in¬ 
ward by a kind of blind restlessness, to burst forth 
again to seek with a mighty onset their accustomed 
seats, especially since the w T aters increase at regular 
intervals and move according to a fixed day and hour 
just as the lunar star attracts them more or less, 
under whose influence the ocean regulates its ebb and 
flow? However, these questions had better be re¬ 
served for their proper place, since you do not deny 
the existence of a providence, but only bring com¬ 
plaints against it. 

5. I wish to reconcile you with the gods since 
they regard the best men with the most favor. For 
in the nature of things, what is good can never harm 
the good. Between good men and the gods a friend¬ 
ship exists, virtue being the bond of amity. Friend¬ 
ship, do I say? nay, more; it is a near relationship 
and likeness, since the good man differs from God 
only in time; he is His pupil and imitator, His true 
offspring, whom his august father, no lenient trainer 
in the virtues, brings up somewhat rigorously after 
the manner of stern parents. 

6. Accordingly, when you see good men, the 
favorites of the gods, toiling, sweating, ascending by 
hard paths, and the bad living in licentious indul- 

80 


De Providcntia 


gence and growing effeminate in luxury, consider 
that we too are gratified with the sobriety of our sons, 
but with the wantonness of our household slaves; 
that the former gain greater self-control by the 
sterner discipline, the latter are confirmed in their 
presumption. The same thing is true in regard to 
God; He does not support the good man in enervating 
ease; He tries him, hardens him, prepares him for 
Himself. 


II. 

“ Why do the good meet with so many adversities?” 
(you ask). No evil thing can befall a good man; 
things in their nature contradictory may not be com¬ 
mingled. Just as so many rivers, so much water 
falling from the clouds above, so great a number 
of springs impregnated with mineral substances, 
do not change the saltness of the sea, do not even 
dilute it; so the assaults of adversity produce no 
change in the spirit of a brave man. He remains 
steadfast, and whatever betides he gains for his colors, 
for he is stronger than all external circumstances. I 
do not, it is true, say, that he is insensible to them, 
but that he triumphs over them, and, moreover, re¬ 
mains calm and serene in spite of obstacles. All un¬ 
toward events he regards as so much drill. Besides, 
is there any man who is only an admirer of noble 
deeds, that is not eager for honest toil, or ready to do 
his duty with alacrity even in the face of danger? To 
what industrious man is not inactivity a punishment? 

81 


De Providentia 


We see athletes, whose purpose is to develop their 
bodily strength, matching themselves with the most 
doughty antagonists, and requiring those who pre¬ 
pare them for a contest to use all their strength 
against their pupils; they allow themselves to be 
smitten and buffeted, and if thay do not find suitable 
single antagonists they pit themselves against several 
at the same time. 

3. When virtue has no antagonist it becomes en¬ 
ervated; then only does it appear what its true char¬ 
acter is, how strong, how virile it is when patient 
endurance shows what it can accomplish. You surely 
know that good men must do the same thing, to the 
end that they may not fear what is hard or formidable, 
nor complain about fate. Whatever happens, let the 
good bear it patiently and turn it to good uses. Not 
what we bear but how we bear it, is the important 
thing. Do you not see how differently fathers and 
mothers show their love for their children? The 
former want their sons to be aroused early in order 
that they may betake themselves to their studies; 
their vacations even they would not have them pass 
in idleness, and they draw sweat and sometimes even 
tears from the youths; but mothers want to fondle 
them on their bosom, keep them in the shade; they 
would never have them weep, never be sad, never un¬ 
dergo toil. 

4. God has a father’s feelings toward good men 
and ardently loves them, and says: “By labors, sor¬ 
rows, privations, let them be tried in order that they 

82 


De Providentia 


may gain real strength.” Animals that are being 
fattened grow languid by their inactivity, and by the 
weight of their own bodies become incapable not only 
of work, but of movement. Unalloyed felicity cannot 
withstand any shock, but a constant struggle against 
obstacles hardens a man against injuries, and he does 
not succumb to any disaster, for even if he falls, he 
fights on his knees. 

5. Are you surprised if God, who is a most de¬ 
voted friend of the good, and who wishes them to 
attain the highest degree of perfection, assigns them 
a place in which they are to be disciplined? Verily, 
I am not surprised that sometimes a desire seizes the 
the gods to behold great men struggling against some 
misfortune. To us mortals it at times affords pleas¬ 
ure to see a courageous youth await with the hunting 
spear, the onset of some wild beast, or if with un- 
blanclied cheek he thrusts back the attack of a lion; 
and the spectacle is agreeable in proportion to the 
rank of him who exhibits it. 

6. These are not the sights that attract the at¬ 
tention of the gods, but childish pastimes and the 
pleasures of men who have no serious aims. Behold 
a spectacle worthy of a god who is intensely inter¬ 
ested in his work; behold a pair of champions worthy 
of god, a brave man pitted against adverse fortune, 
especially if he himself be the challenging party. 
I do not see, I say, what more agreeable sight on 
earth Jupiter can look upon, if he turns his attention 
thither, than to behold Cato, after his party had been 

83 


De Providentia 


more than once defeated, standing erect, nevertheless, 
amid the ruins of the republic. 

7. Said he, “Though everything has yielded to 
the behests of one man; though the lands be guarded 
by legions and the seas by fleets and the soldiers of 
Caesar keep watch at our gates, there is a way of es¬ 
cape for Cato. Single-handed will he make a broad 
way for liberty; this sword, pure and untarnished 
even in civil strife, shall at length perform a worthy 
and noble deed; the liberty it could not give to his 
country, it shall give to Cato. Perform my soul, a 
deed long meditated, free thyself from earthly con¬ 
cerns ! 

8. Already Petreius and Juba have turned their 
swords against each other and lie dead, slain with 
mutual hands. A brave and glorious covenant to 
die was that, but one that was unworthy of my 
greatness; it is as ignoble for Cato to beg for 
death at the hands of another as (to beg for) life.” I 
am sure the gods looked with keen satisfaction when 
that hero, the intrepid liberator of himself, takes 
counsel for the safety of others and provides a way of 
escape for the fugitives; when he pursues his studies 
far even into that final night; when he thrusts the 
sword into his own sacred breast; when he disem¬ 
bowels himself and sets free with his own hand that 
purest spirit unworthy to be contaminated with a 
sword. 

9. Hence I would fain believe that the thrust was 
badly directed and the wound not fatal; it was not 

84 


De Providentia 


enough for the immortal gods to have beheld Cato 
once only; his courage was restrained and called back 
that it might show itself in a more difficult part. 
For death may be said not so much to have come 
upon so great a soul as to have been sought by it. 
Why should they not rejoice to see their favorite 
pass from life in a way so glorious and memorable? 
Death deifies those whose departure fills with admi¬ 
ration even those who stand aghast at the manner of it. 

III. 

But as I proceed with my discourse, I shall show 
that not all those things which seem to be evils are 
such. For the present, I affirm that the conditions 
you call hard, adverse, and terrible, are in the first 
place best for those very persons whom they befall; 
and in the second, for all men, since the gods are 
more concerned for mankind as a whole than for the 
individual; and lastly; that they happen either with 
their approval, or to men who are worthy of them, if 
without their approval. To these propositions I shall 
add that such things take place in the fixed order of 
the world and rightly happen to the good, in virtue 
of the same law which makes them good. From this 
point of view I shall then convince you that you 
never need feel pity for the good man; for though he 
may be called unfortunate, he never is so. 

2. The most difficult of the affirmations I have 
made seems to be the first, to wit, that it is for our 
own good these very things happen which we dread 

85 


De Providentia 


and shudder at. Is it good for anybody, you say, to 
be driven into exile, to see his children reduced to 
want, to bear a wife to the grave, to be disgraced, 
maimed? If you are surprised that this should re¬ 
sult in good to any one, then you will be surprised 
that persons are sometimes cured by cutting and 
burning not the less than by hunger and thirst. But 
if you will reflect that as remedial measures, the 
bones have to be laid bare or taken out, veins to be 
extracted, and even members to be amputated, be¬ 
cause they cannot be allowed to remain attached 
to it without detriment to the whole body; you 
will also admit that some unpleasant things are an 
advantage to those whom they befall, no less than that 
some things which are accounted good and are sought 
after, are an injury to those who find pleasure in 
them, such as eating and drinking to excess and 
other things that kill by the gratification they afford. 

3. Among the many noteworthy sayings of our 
friend Demetrius there is one that is fresh in my 
mind and keeps sounding and ringing in my ears. 
•‘There is no being,” says he, “more unfortunate than 
the man who never felt adversity.” For he has never 
had an opportunity to test himself. Though every¬ 
thing may have come to him when he wished it or 
even before he wished it, the gods have nevertheless 
not thought well of him. They have adjudged him 
unworthy of a struggle with adversity lest he be over¬ 
come by it, for it avoids all cowards as if saying, 
Why should I choose such an antagonist? he lays 

8Q 


De Providentia 


down his arms forthwith; there is no need of all my 
strength against him; he is beaten by a feeble onset; 
he cannot bear even a look. 

4. Let another be selected for the struggle. It is 
a shame to fight with a man who wants to be beaten. 
A gladiator regards it as a disgrace to be pitted 
against an inferior antagonist for he knows there is 
no glory in overcoming one who is vanquished with¬ 
out danger. Adversity does likewise; it seeks out 
foemen worthy of their antagonist and passes by 
some with disdain. It always attacks the doughtiest 
and boldest for a trial of its strength. 

5. It tries Mucius with fire, Fabricius with pover¬ 
ty, Regulus with torture, Socrates with poison, Cato 
with death. It is misfortune alone that finds noble 
examples. Is Mucius to be commiserated because he 
put his hand into an enemy’s fire and punished him¬ 
self for his mistake? because he vanquished with a 
burned hand a king whom he could not vanquish 
with it armed? Would he have been happier if he 
had warmed it in the bosom of a mistress? 

6. Is Fabricius to be pitied because he tilled his 
own field when not engaged in public duties? be¬ 
cause he waged war against riches as well as against 
Pyrrhus? because he ate, by his own fireside, the 
same roots and herbs that his triumphant old age 
pulled up on his farm? Can we say that he would 
have been happier if he had filled his stomach with 
fish from a far off strand and with exotic birds? or if 
he had stimulated his jaded and nauseated stomach 

87 


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with oysters from the Upper and the Lower sea? or if 
he had encircled with a huge pile of different fruits, 
the finest game captured at the cost of many a hunts¬ 
man’s life? 

7. Is Rutilius unfortunate because those who con¬ 
demned him decided a case against themselves for all 
time to come? because he was more willing to be de¬ 
prived of his country than to be recalled from exile? 
because he alone dared to deny anything to the 
dictator Sulla, and when invited to return, not only 
refused, but fled farther? “ Let those manage affairs,” 
said he, “whom thy good fortune keeps in Rome! Let 
them look upon the pool of blood in the Forum and 
the heads of senators floating on the Servilian lake,— 
for that was the field of carnage of those proscribed 
by Sulla—and the bands of assassins roaming through 
the city, and the many thousands of Roman citizens 
slain in one place after pledges of immunity had 
been given, yes, because of those very pledges! Let 
those look upon these things who are not able to en¬ 
dure exile.” 

8. Shall we say that Sulla is to be congratulated 
because, when he descends to the Forum, a way is 
opened for him with the sword? because he allows 
the heads of men of consular rank to be shown him 
in public, and paid the price of their slaughter by the 
hand of the quaestor and from the fisc? And he 
who did these things is the same man that enacted 
the Cornelian law! Let us return to Regulus. What 
injury did his destiny do him by making him, the 

88 


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well' known exemplar of good faith, an exemplar of 
patient endurance? Nails pierce his skin, and what¬ 
ever way he lays down his weary body he lies on a 
wound, while his open eyes doom him to perpetual 
wakefulness. 

9. The greater the anguish, the greater will be the 
glory. Wouldst thou know how little he regretted 
the high value he set on fortitude? Heal his wounds 
and send him back to the senate—he will give the 
same advice (as before). Dost thou think Maecenas 
happier when a prey to the torments of love and when 
grieving over the daily repulses of a wayward wife, 
he courts sleep amid the sound of symphonies softly 
sounding in the distance? Though he stupify him¬ 
self with wine, and seek diversion in the murmur of 
waters, or trick his troubled mind with a thousand 
pastimes, he lies awake on his bed of down no less 
than the other on his bed of torture. But for the 
former there is the solace that h e is enduring hard¬ 
ness for a noble purpose, and he can look away from 
his pain to its cause; the latter, surfeited with pleas¬ 
ures, weighed down by an excess of good fortune, is 
more tormented by the cause of his sufferings than 
by the sufferings themselves. 

10. Not yet has vice so completely taken posses¬ 
sion of the human race as to make it doubtful that 
the majority, if they had the choice of their lot, 
would prefer that of Regulus to that of Maecenas. 
Or, if there should be anybody who had presumption 
enough to say that he had rather be born a Maecenas 

89 


De Providentia 


than a Regulus, the same person, even though he 
might not openly admit it, would also rather be born 
a Terentia. Do you pronounce Socrates unfortunate 
because he drained the executioner’s cup as if it had 
been the draught of immortality, and discoursed about 
death up to the moment it overtook him? Was his 
lot an unhappy one because his blood congealed and 
his vital force stopped by the gradually advancing 
rigor of death? 

11. How much more is he to be envied than those 
who are served from goblets studded with gems, for 
whom a male prostitute, accustomed to submit to 
every kind of abuse, whose virility is gone or at least 
doubtful, dissolves the snow that floats in a golden 
chalice? Whatever they drink they vomit up, to 
their chagrin, and taste again mixed with bile; but he 
willingly and with joy drains the poisonous draught. 
For Cato it is sufficient that the unanimous verdict of 
mankind has raised him to the pinacle of felicity; 
him destiny selected as one who was fitted to contend 
against everything that is to be dreaded. 

12. Is the enmity of the powers that be a serious 
matter? let him be opposed at the same time by 
Pompey, Caesar, Crassus. Is it hard to bear when 
one is less honored than w T orse men? let him be sacri¬ 
ficed for Vatinius. Is it a hard thing to be involved 
in civil wars? throughout the whole world let him 
fight for the good cause, equally renowned for his 
misfortunes as for his bravery. Is it hard to take 
one’s own life? let him do it. What do I wish to 

90 


De Providentia 


prove by these things? I would have all men know 
that those vicissitudes of which Cato was deemed 
worthy, cannot be regarded as evils. 

IV. 

Prosperity conies to ordinary people and to men of 
mean abilities, but it is the prerogative of a great 
man to overcome the calamities and terrors that 
frighten mortals. In truth, to be always happy and 
to pass one’s life without mental anxiety, is to be 
ignorant of half of man’s destiny. Thou art a great 
man; yet how am I to know it unless fate gives thee 
an opportunity to show thy worth? 

2. Thou didst enter the Olympian games as a con¬ 
testant; if there was none beside thyself, thou hast 
the crown, thou hast not the victory. I congratulate 
thee, not as a brave man, but as one who has gained 
the consulship or the praetership: thou hast won 
political honors. I can say the same thing to a good 
man, unless some more than ordinary emergency has 
given him an opportunity to show his strength of 
soul. 

3. Unhappy do I adjudge thee, if thou hast never 
been unhappy; thou hast passed thy life without an 
adversary. No one knows what thou mightest have 
done; thou dost not even know it thyself. We need 
to be tried that we may find out what we are; what a 
man can do can be ascertained only by trial. For 
this reason men have sometimes voluntarily encourn 
tered obstacles that seemed to evade them and sought 

91 


De Providentia 


an opportunity for demonstrating to others the virtue 
that was passing into oblivion. 

4. I assert that great men sometimes rejoice in 
tribulation like valiant soldiers in battles. I heard 
Triumphus, a gladiator under Caius Caesar (Caligula) 
complain because he had so little to do. “ How my 
best days are speeding away,” said he! Courage is 
eager for danger and looks to the end in view, not at 
what it is likely to encounter, for the reason that what 
it encounters is part of the glory. Warriors are 
proud of their wounds; joyfully they point to the blood 
it was their good fortune to shed. Those who re¬ 
turn from the combat unscathed may have been just 
as brave—it is the wounded man that is the observed 
of all eyes. 

God shows his good will to those whom he would 
have attain the highest excellence every time he gives 
them an opportunity to display courage and endurance; 
this is possible only in some contingency beset with 
difficulties. You form your opinion of a pilot in a 
storm; of a soldier, in battle. By what test am I 
to know how thou wilt bear up against poverty, if 
thou aboundest in wealth? By what test am I to 
know how thou wilt bear up under ignominy and 
disgrace and popular hatred, if thou growest old 
amid public applause? if a strong and unswerving 
popular partiality supports thee in all thou doest? 

6. How am I to know with what equanimity thou 
wilt bear the loss of children, if thou scest about 
thee all those thou hast begotten? I have listened 

92 


De Providentia 


to thee when thou wert offering consolation to others; 
then should I have seen thee when thou wert thyself 
in need of consolation; when thou wert trying to 
restrain thyself from sorrowing. Do not, I beseech 
thee, shrink from these things which the immortal 
gods send upon thee as stimuli to thy courage. A 
disaster is an occasion of virtue. Those persons one 
can rightly call wretched who grow effeminate in 
superabounding prosperity; whom a dead calm bears 
along, as it were, in a motionless sea. 

7. No matter what befalls them, they are unpre¬ 
pared for it. Hardships bear heaviest on those who 
have never known them; heavy lies the yoke on the 
neck that has not felt it. The mere thought of a 
wound makes the raw recruit turn pale; the veteran 
looks without blanching upon his own blood because 
he knows that he has often gained a victory at the 
price of it. Then it is that God trains and hardens 
those whom he has chosen, whom he loves and 
wishes well to; but those whom he seems to treat 
with indulgence, whom he spares, he keeps tender 
for the evils to come. For you are mistaken if you 
conclude that any one is exempt; he who has long 
basked in the sunshine of fortune will have his 
turn. 

Every one that thinks he is discharged has been 
placed among the reserves. (You ask) why does 
God afflict every good man with ill health or sor- 
row or other misfortune? Because in campdife the 
most perilous duties are also laid on the bravest; the 
93 


De Providentia 


commander sends picked men to fall upon the enemy 
from a nocturnal ambuscade, or to explore a route, 
or to carry by assault an outpost. No one of those 
who go forth says, “ The general has a poor opinion 
of me,” but, “ He has judged wisely and well,” And 
so let all say who are ordered to undergo what to the 
coward and the slothful seem to be painful experi¬ 
ences: God has accounted us worthy to be used as 
examples by which to show how much human 
nature can endure. Flee from pleasure, from that 
unmanly felicity in which the active powers of 
the mind grow torpid, unless something intervenes 
to recall man’s lot, by a sort of perpetual intoxica¬ 
tion. 

9. Him whom glass windows protect against every 
breath of air; whose feet are kept warm by fomenta¬ 
tions periodically renewed; whose dining-rooms are 
made always comfortable by heat within the walls and 
under the floor—such a person, not even a gentle 
breeze passes over without danger. Though every¬ 
thing that transcends the bounds of moderation is 
hurtful, the most perilous intemperance is that of 
good fortune. It excites the brain, awakens idle 
fancies in the mind, puts dense darkness between the 
false and the true. 

10. Which is better, to bear up under continuous 
misfortune that incites us to do our best, or to be 
crushed under unbounded and inexhaustible riches? 
Death comes gently when the stomach is empty; it 
is from repletion that men die like beasts. Accord- 

91 


De Providentia 


ingly the gods follow the same method with good 
men that teachers follow with good pupils—they re¬ 
quire the hardest labor from those of whom they 
cherish the highest hopes. Dost thou believe that it 
is out of hatred for their children that the Lacedae¬ 
monians try, by public seourgings, what stuff they 
are made of? Their own fathers exhort them to bear 
bravely their flagellations, and ask them, when bleed¬ 
ing and half dead, to proffer unflinchingly their 
wounds for fresh wounds. 

11. Why is it strange if God sends severe trials 
upon noble spirits? a test of one’s courage is never 
an easy matter. Is it destiny that scourges and 
lacerates us? let us endure it; ’ tis not wanton cru¬ 
elty, it is a contest; the oftener we enter it, the 
stronger we shall become. The solidest part of the 
body, frequent use has made so. We must be sub¬ 
jected to the buffetings of fortune in order that in 
this way we may become callous to it. Little by 
little, fortune makes us a match for itself; contempt 
of dangers results from often braving them. In this 
way sailors inure their bodies to the sea; the hands 
of the husbandman are calloused; the arms of the 
soldier are strong from hurling javelins; the limbs of 
runners are agile. That part of everybody is the 
strongest that has exercised the most. 

12. The soul acquires the strength to brave mis¬ 
fortune by patient endurance; what it can effect in 
us thou mayst know, if thou dost but consider what 
hardship does for those peoples that go about with- 

95 


De Providentia 


out clothing and are strong by their very indigence. 
Consider all the nations over whom the sway of Rome 
does not extend, I mean the Germans and every 
nomad tribe along the Danube. Perpetual winter, 
a severe climate, bear hard upon them, a sterile soil 
grudgingly supports them, a hut or branches of trees 
protect them against the rain, they roam over marshes 
hardened by frost, for food they capture wild beasts. 

13. Dost thou think them wretched? No one is 
wretched when he performs what habit has made 
second nature to him; for by degress we find pleasure 
in doing what we began to do from necessity. These 
peoples have no houses and no resting place except 
as weariness finds them from day to day; their food 
is cheap and obtaiued only as wanted; their naked 
bodies are exposed to the terrible extremes of a 
horrid climate; what thou regardest as a frightful 
calamity is the whole life of many peoples. 

14. Why dost thou wonder that good men are 
called upon to undergo violent shocks to the end that 
they may stand the more firmly? A tree does not 
take deep root, or grow strong, unless it is frequently 
shaken by the wind; for as a result of violent agita¬ 
tion its fiber is toughened and its roots more firmly 
set. Those are fragile that grow up in sheltered val¬ 
leys. It is therefore a boon to good men, as it makes 
them fearless amid danger, to become familiar with 
hardships and to bear with equanimity those things 
that are not ills, except when they are borne with an 
ill grace. 


96 


De Providentia 


V. 

Add, now, that it is best for all that every good man 
should, so to speak, be always under arms and in ac¬ 
tion. It is the purpose of God, just as if He were a 
wise man, to demonstrate that those things which the 
average man longs for, which he fears, are neither 
good nor evil; but it will be evident that those things 
are good that are sent upon good men, and those evil, 
that fall upon the bad. Blindness would be dreadful, 
if nobody had lost his sight except those who deserved 
to have their eyes put out. Accordingly, let Appius 
and Metellus be deprived of eyesight. Riches are 
not a good. 

2. And so even the procurer Elius is rich in order 
that money to which men have given a sacred charac¬ 
ter in temples may also be found in a brothel. In no 
way is God better able to expose to contempt those 
things that men covet than by bestowing them 
upon the vilest and taking them from the worthiest. 
“But,”sayst thou, “it is unjust that a good man 
should suffer mutilation, or be crucified, or be bound 
in fetters, while the bad strut proudly at large and 
live in luxury.” 

3. What then? is it not also unjust when brave 
men are required to take up arms, to pass the night 
in camps and to defend the outposts, though the 
bandages are still on their wounds, while in the city, 
eunuchs and debauchees by profession go about in 
security. What further? is it not unjust that the 
noblest virgins should be aroused at night to perform 

97 


De Providentia 


their sacred duties while impure women are enjoying 
sound sleep? Toil claims the best men. The senate 
is often in session during the entire day, when at the 
same time all the vilest men are either taking their 
ease in the Campus Martius, or loitering in eatings 
houses, or wasting their time in idle gossip. It is 
just so in the world at large—good men toil, sacrifice 
themselves or are sacrificed, and willingly at that. 
They are not dragged along by destiny, they follow it 
and keep pace with it; had they known whither it 
would lead them, they would have preceded it. 

4. I remember also to have heard these encourag¬ 
ing words from that noblest of men, Demetrius. “ This 
one complaint,” said he, “ I have to make against you, 
ye immortal gods: it is that ye did not sooner make 
known to me your will; for of my own accord I would 
have come to those things to which I am now sum¬ 
moned. Do you wish to take away my children? 
For you I have brought them up. Do you wish any 
portion of my body? Take it. No great thing it is 
that I am offering you; soon I shall resign it entirely 
to you. Do you wish my life? Why not? I shall not 
be slow to give back to you what ye have entrusted 
to my keeping; ye shall find me willing to give up 
anything ye ask. Still I should rather have proferred 
it to you than given it up. What need was there to 
take what you could have had as a gift. Yet not 
even now do ye need to constrain me, since that is 
not taken from a man which he does not try to retain. 
I am in no sense the victim of constraint or violence, 

98 


De Providentia 


nor am I God’s slave, but I am in accord with Him, 
and this all the more cheerfully because I know that 
everything takes its course in accordance with an 
immutable law established from all eternity.” 

5. The fates lead us, and our lot is assigned to us 
from the very hour of our birth. Cause depends up¬ 
on cause; an unbroken chain of events links together 
public and private affairs. We ought therefore to 
bear with fortitude whatever befalls us because every¬ 
thing takes place, not as we think, by chance, but in 
its due order. A long time in advance, all our pleas¬ 
ures and our pains have been determined, and al¬ 
though in the great diversity of individual lives, one 
life may seem to stand apart, it all comes to this: 
transitory beings ourselves we have entered into a 
transitory inheritance. 

6. Why then does this disquiet us? Why in¬ 
dulge in complaints? it is the law of our existence 
Let nature use our bodies, which are its own, as it 
wishes; let us cheerfully and bravely meet whatever 
comes, bearing in mind that what we lose is not our 
property. What is the duty of a good man? To re¬ 
sign himself to his destiny. It is a great consolation 
to share the fate of the universe. Whatever it 
be that decrees how we are to live, how to die, it 
binds even the gods by the same inexorable law; an 
irresistible current bears along terrestrial and celes¬ 
tial things. 

The creator and governor of the universe has in¬ 
deed prescribed the course of events, but He Himself 
99 


De Providentia 


follows them; He obeys always, He commanded but 
once. 

7. “ But why was God so unjust in the destinies he 
prescribed for mortals, as to send upon good men 
poverty, wounds, and cruel deaths”? The artisan 
cannot change matter; it is passive. There are some 
things that cannot be separated from others; they 
are bound together and indivisible. Sluggish na¬ 
tures and such as are prone to sink into slumber or 
into a state closely akin to slumber, are conjoined of 
inert elements; to form a man who is really worthy 
of the name a more heroic destiny is needed. His 
path will not be smooth; he must go up=hill and 
dowmhill, be tossed on the waves, and guide his 
bark through turbid waters; in spite of changing for¬ 
tune, he must hold on his way. 

8. He will meet many obstacles hard to remove or 
surmount, but he will himself remove them and 
smooth his path. Gold is tried by fire; brave men 
by misfortune. Behold to what heights virtue may 
climb; thou shouldst know that it cannot goby ways 
that are free from dangers. 

Hard is the way at first: though drawn by prancing steeds. 
Slow, up the sky, the shining car proceeds;— 

On land and sea I gaze from heaven’s high crest; 

Fear and emotion fill my heaving breast. 

Steep is the downward way, and with tight rein 
I must the ardor of my steeds restrain; 

E’en Tethys, wont to greet me ’neath the waves, 

Fears lest we plunge headlong to wat’ry graves. 

9. When the high-spirited youth heard these words 
he said, “I like the way; I shall ascend it even though 

100 


De Providentia 


I fall forthwith in so doing.” The sumgod still tries 
to dissuade him from his rash purpose by exciting 
his fears: 

Hold straight thy course nor turn for aught aside, 

Through Taurus’ horns adverse thy coursers guide, 

And Haeraon’s bow and Leo’s searching face. 

To this lie replied, “Yoke the steeds to the chariot; 
by the very words which you seek to deter me, you in¬ 
cite me. I long to stand where Sol himself quakes 
with fear; it is only ignoble and weak souls that jour¬ 
ney on safe roads; courage ventures on giddy 
heights.” 

VI. 

“But why does God suffer any evil to befall the 
good ” ? Verily, He does not suffer it. He wards off 
from them all evils, crimes and misdeeds and impure 
thoughts and avaricious designs and unbridled 
passions and lust after other men’s property; He 
watches over and protects them. Will any one in ad¬ 
dition to this demand of God that He shall also bear 
the luggage of good men (as if He were a slave)! 
They themselves cast this burden upon God; mere 
externals they make light of. Democritus threw 
away his riches, thinking them a fardel upon his no¬ 
ble soul. Why do you wonder that God sometimes 
suffers that to come upon a good man which he him¬ 
self desires? 

2. “Good men sometimes lose their children.” 
Why not, when they sometimes even put them to 
101 


De Providentia 


death? “ They are sent into exile.” Why not, when 
they sometimes leave their country, voluntarily, never 
to return? “ They are put to death.” Why not, when 
they sometimes lay violent hands on themselves? 
“ Why do they suffer many hardships?” That they 
may teach others to suffer patiently; they are born to 
be examples. 

3. Think of (rod as speaking to them thus: “ What 
right have ye to complain of me, ye who take pleasure 
in doing right? Other men I have encompassed 
with seductive pleasures and their torpid souls I have 
lulled into a long and delusive sleep; gold, silver and 
ivory I have lavished upon them; yet at heart they are 
good for nothing. Those men whom you look upon 
as fortunate, if you regard them, not with respect to 
what is external but what is concealed, are wretched, 
unclean, deformed, adorned on the outside after 
the similitude of their own walls. Their good for¬ 
tune is not substantial and unalloyed; it is a mere 
crust and a thin one at that. 

4. Accordingly, as long as they are allowed to 
stand and to show themselves as they wish to appear, 
they make a brilliant and imposing display; but when 
something occurs that disarranges their plans and 
discloses their true character, then it becomes apparent 
how real and deep their foulness. To you I have given 
a genuine, an abiding good; the more one turns it 
about and looks at it from every side, the greater and 
better it appears. I have given you the strength to 
contemn what other men fear; to make of little ac- 

102 


De Providentia 


count what others long for. You do not shine be¬ 
cause of externals; it is the kingdom within you that 
is your highest good. Thus does the world disdain 
what is on the outside because happy in the contem¬ 
plation of itself; within you have I placed all real 
good; not to need happiness is your happiness.” 

5. “ But many sad occurrences take place, things 
from which we shrink in terror, and which are hard 
to bear.” “ Because I am not able to ward them off 
from you, I have armed you against all changes of 
fortune. Endure bravely; in this you may surpass 
God: He is exempt from suffering, you are superior to 
it. Contemn poverty; no one lives so poor as he is 
born. Contemn pain; either it will end or you. Con¬ 
temn fortune; I have given to it no weapon with 
which to wound the soul. Contemn death; it either 
ends your existence or transfers it. 

6. Before all things, I took care that no one should 
keep you here against your will; the way for your 
departure is open. If you do not want to fight, you 
can run away. Therefore, with all the restrictions I 
have placed upon you, I have made nothing easier 
for you than death. Only look and you will see how 
short and easy is the way to liberty. I have made 
the way shorter for those who wish to go out of the 
world than for those who are entering it; besides, des¬ 
tiny would have had great power over you, if it were 
as hard for a man to die as to be born. 

7. Every moment of time, every place, can teach 
you how easy it is to quit nature’s service and to re- 

ios 


De Providentia 


turn to her her gift. At the very foot of the altar and 
amid the solemnities of those who are offering sacri¬ 
fices for the preservation of life, learn to know death. 
The huge bodies of bulls drop from the effects of a 
little wound, and beasts of enormous strength are 
felled by a blow from a human hand; with a little 
piece of iron the jointures of the vertabrae are 
severed, and when the ligature that binds the head 
and neck is cut asunder, the huge mass falls dead to 
the ground. 

8. The breath does not lurk in some secret hiding 
place, nor must it necessarily be sought out with 
the sword; there is no need of piercing the vitals 
with a deep wound; death is close at hand. I have 
not designated any particular place for the fatal 
thrust, it may enter anywhere. What is called death, 
that time in which the spirit leaves the body, is so 
brief that its fleetness cannot be perceived. Whether 
it be a noose that strangles you, or water that suffo¬ 
cates you, or a fall upon the hard earth that dashes 
the life out of you, or fire drawn in with the breath 
that cuts off its return—whatever it be, its effect is 
speedy. Are you not ashamed to fear so long what 
may be done so quickly?” 


NOTES. 

A few notes have been added to the translation. 
They bear chiefly on obscure allusions in Seneca’s 
treatise, as the necessary biographical data may be 

104 



De Providentia 


found in almost any encyclopedia. The notes are 
placed by themselves so as not to interrupt the 
reader, who may omit them, if he chooses. 

I. 

2. It was held by some of the Greek philosophers, nota¬ 
bly Epicurus, that the universe was built up by a fortuitous 
concourse of atoms. 

4. Some texts have quaeris, you are seeking information. 

6. Vernae were slaves born in the household of their mas¬ 
ters, sometimes his own children by a female slave. The 
licentia vernularum was proverbial in Rome. The vernae and 
vernulae were allowed privileges not accorded to slaves ob¬ 
tained by purchase. 

II. 

In suum colorem , to its colors. The parties represented in 
the racecourse were distinguished by different colors. The 
significance of the expression is therefore evident. Another 
less probable explanation of the passage is that the author 
has reference to the effect of red wine when mixed with li¬ 
quids of another color. 

3. As the holidays in Rome were very numerous much 
time was lost by those who spent all of them in idleness. 

7. Cato, surnamed Uticensis, is here meant. He was the 
patron saint of the Roman Stoics. 

9. The sentence here translated, “ For death, ” etc., may 
also mean, “For it requires less courage to meet death (once) 
than to seek it a second time.” 

III. 

6. The wild boar roasted whole was generally placed on the 
center of the table. Around it were piled fruits, vegatables, 
etc. 

7. Tua felicitas. Sulla called himself Felix, and in the 
next section we find this epithet applied to him. The atroci¬ 
ties he committed are familiar to every reader of Roman his¬ 
tory. 

8. The Cornelian law. The Roman Legal Code was greatly 
modified under the inspiration of Sulla. The statute here re- 

105 


De Providentia 


ferred to, fixed the penalty for homicide and similar crimes. 
It bore its author’s gentile name. 

The familiar story of Regulus was accepted as true by 
the Romans, and, in fact, by the world generally, until recent 
times. It is interesting as showing the high estimate placed 
upon patriotism by the Romans from their point of view. 
Though narrow it was intense and played a conspicuous part 
in the growth of the Roman state. 

9. Maecenas the well-known Premier of the emperor Au¬ 
gustus was passionately attached to his wife Terentia; but her 
fidelity was more than suspected, a condition of things that led 
to many quarrels with her husband. 

11. The writer refers here to the disgusting practice of the 
Romans, who, at their feasts, frequently ate and drank to 
excess, then produced vomiting in order to be able to begin 
eating and drinking over again. 

12. Vatinius was a worthless fellow who defeated Cato in 
the contest for the praetorship. 

IV. 

12, The Romans were wilfully blind as to the climate and 
soil of Germany. It was a case of “ sour grapes.” After vainly 
endeavoring to conquer its inhabitants, they decided that they 
were not worth the trouble of conquest. 

V. 

6. “ Whatever it be ” etc. The First Cause, about which 
Seneca is in some doubt, whether it is personal or impersonal, 
material or immaterial; whether matter exists of necessity or 
is created. In 4 he uses mundus in a personal sense. He is 
also inconsistent in his attitude toward suicide; for after assur¬ 
ing us in the strongest language, that it is every man’s duty 
to endure whatever Providence or Fate or Destiny or Chance 
sends upon him, he ends by telling him that if the service is 
too hard he is at perfect liberty to run away from it. Gr6ard 
rightly says, “He confuses God with the world, Providence 
with destiny; he admits and does not admit the immortality 
of the soul; he proclaims the freedom of the will, and denies it. 

8. 9. Dr. Lodge, (1614) translates the two extracts from 
Ovid’s Metamorphoses as follows: 

106 


De Providentia 


“The first which with unwearied steeds I clime, 

Is such a iourney that their ceaseless toyle 
Can scarcily reach before the morrowes prime; 

The next is highest heau’n from whence the soyle 
And spacious seas, I see with dreadfull eye 
And fearfull heart; the next whereto I hie 
Is steep and prone and craues a cunning guide; 

And then dothe Thetis shake herselfe for dread, 

Lest headlong I should fall and downward glide, 

And burie in her waues my golden head.” 

“And that thou mayst continue in the way, 

Be carefull lest thy posting steeds doe stray; 

Yet shalt thou pass by Taurus, who will bend 
His homes to cross thee, whither thou dost tend; 

Th’ Aemonian Archer and the Lion fell 

Shall stay thy course and fright thee where they dwell.” 

See also the classical dictionary under Phaethon. 

VI. 

6. An inclined plane down which an object may be easily 
started to roll. 

8. The final sentence more literally translated would read, 
Are you not ashamed? what is so quickly done you fear so 
long? 


107 


PLUTARCH AND THE GREECE OF HIS AGE. 

Ever since I have known enough about Greek 
literature to form an opinion of my own on its merits, 
it has been a matter of surprise to me that the authors 
who flourished in the century or two immediately 
preceding and succeeding the Christian era, are 
treated with so much neglect. The histories of 
Greek literature, whose name is legion, frequently 
end with Grecian independence; or if they continue 
the subject some centuries longer, treat the later 
periods in a half=hearted and perfunctory manner, as 
if they were deserving of nothing better. While it is 
true, that in some departments the field is relatively 
infertile, there are many writers well worth a careful 
study, and several eminently so. The storm and 
stress period is over; the centuries of vigorous pro¬ 
ductions well-nigh past; yet the Greek mind is not 
dead; the field of authorship still bears many fine 
ears and occasionally a large sheaf for the careful 
gleaner. The times that could produce a Polybius, a 
Plutarch, an Epictetus, an Arrian, a Dion Chrysos- 
tomus, a Lucian, to say nothing of Josephus and 
Philo, together with others, a score or more in num¬ 
ber, cannot justly be charged with intellectual stag¬ 
nation. If the form in which the later writers ex¬ 
press their thoughts has no longer the elegance, nor 
the thoughts themselves the profundity, of their pre- 
108 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


decessors, they are far from being unworthy of pains¬ 
taking study. If men reflected less, they did more, 
or were at least active in a larger sphere. Greeks 
were now to be found in all parts of the civilized 
world; they still provided its intellectual nourish¬ 
ment; Athens was still its university and it is of the 
Greeks of these centuries more than of the earlier 
that Horace could say, 

Graeca capta ferum victorem cepit et artes 
Intulit agresti Latio. 

Greek culture had become so widespread that a 
sojourn in Athens was no longer necessary for those 
who were ambitious to learn the language in its 
purest form. Though this city was still looked upon 
with a certain filial regard, half a score of rivals had 
sprung up in three continents that at times seriously 
threatened its prestige. The centuries that meet at 
the birth of Christ are the link that unites the golden 
age of Greek literature with the Renaissance. In 
them was coined much of the small change of Greek 
thought, which was by reason of its form the more 
widely circulated. That much of it was silver, so to 
speak, only made it the more generally available. 

But while the writings of these three or four cen¬ 
turies have suffered greatly from neglect at the hands 
of the moderns, the language in its narrower sense, 
except that of the New Testament, has been almost 
wholly ignored. It needs but a brief examination of 
the current Greek dictionaries to convince the stu¬ 
dent that here is an ample field for profitable work. 

109 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


Even the great Thesaurus of Stephanus often leaves 
one sadly in the lurch; besides, it is both too exten¬ 
sive and too expensive for general use. What we 
need is a careful lexicographical and grammatical 
study of the individual authors and the presentation 
of the results in as succinct a form as possible. 

It is a pleasure to note the signs of a revival in this 
quarter—for that it is not a misnomer to speak of a 
revival will be evident to those who know that the 
reader of some of the authors above named, together 
with others, is largely compelled to rely on texts that 
are more than half a century old, in some cases much 
more. In this laudable w T ork of rediscovery, Professor 
Mahaffy in Great Britain, and Professor Krumbacher 
in Germany, may be regarded as the leaders. The 
former, by his various works upon the Greeks under 
Roman sway, and the latter by his masterly Geschich - 
te der Byzantinischen Litteratur and his Byzantinische 
Zeitschrift have done more than any two writers in 
the present century to awaken an interest in a sub¬ 
ject that has long been in a comatose condition. The 
present volume, though bearing upon the general 
theme, is concerned with but a small portion of it. I 
have tried to throw a little light upon two authors, in 
whose writings are many passages that put them in 
some sort of relation to nascent Christianity. While 
it is almost absolutely certain that neither Seneca 
nor Plutarch had any knowledge of the new doctrines 
first preached in their time, it ought surely to be a 
matter of interest to every thinking man to note how 
no 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


closely the best that is in the old philosophy ap¬ 
proached the new religion; or, to state the case some¬ 
what differently, that the old philosophy and the new 
religion are in many points identical. 

The French have, almost from the beginning of 
their national literature, been ardent admirers of 
Plutarch. Amyot reduced some of his precepts to 
rhyme in order that they might the more readily be 
taught to children, and regarded his writings as more 
profitable than any other except the Scriptures. 
Gui-Patin makes Pliny, Aristotle, Plutarch, and 
Seneca constitute an entire family,—father, mother, 
older and younger brother—and thus in a sense 
represent the whole circle of literature. Rollin copies 
his Parallel Lives almost literally into his Ancient 
History. Rousseau cites him among the few authors 
that he read in his old age. He is the last consola¬ 
tion of St. Pierre. Laharpe regards him as by nature 
the most moral man that ever lived; and Joubert 
calls him the Herodotus of Philosophy, and deems 
his Lives the wisdom of antiquity in its entirety. 
Montaigne says, “ I never settled myself to the read¬ 
ing of any authors but Plutarch and Seneca.” Again, 
“ Plutarch had rather we should applaud his judg¬ 
ment than commend his knowledge, and had rather 
leave us with an appetite to read more, than glutted 
with that we have already read. He knew very well 
that a man may say too much even upon the best 
subjects, and that Alexandrides did justly reproach 
him who made very elegant but too long speeches to 
ill 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


the Ephori, when he said: ; O stranger, thou speakest 
the things thou oughtest to speak, but not after the 
manner thou shouldst speak them.’ ” Elsewhere he 
recurs to the subject with these words, “As to what 
concerns my other reading that mixes a little more 
profit with the pleasure and whence I learn how to 
marshal my opinions, the books that serve me to this 
purpose are Plutarch and Seneca. Both of them 
have this great convenience suited to my humor, that 
the knowledge I there seek is discoursed in some 
pieces that do not require any great tronble of read¬ 
ing long, of which I am incapable.” In his Essays, 
Montaigne refers to or quotes Plutarch more than 
two hundred times, and Seneca almost as often. So 
far as Plutarch’s Lives are concerned, the translation 
published by Jacques Amyot, bishop of Auxerre, 
in 1559, is still regarded as a masterpiece. This ver¬ 
sion is of special interest to English-speaking people, 
because from it Sir Thomas North made his transla¬ 
tion, published some twenty years later, and Shake¬ 
speare, in turn, took the material for his plays dealing 
with antique life. Of later English translations, that 
of the Langhorne is undoubtedly the most popular, 
though the one known as Dryden’s, albeit he had 
little to do with it, as revised by A. H. Clough, is 
much read. That of Stewart and Long is not gen¬ 
erally known. There seems to be no English transla¬ 
tion of Plutarch’s Moral Writings except that made 
by a number of Oxford scholars some two centuries 
since and edited by Professor Goodwin. The Ger- 
112 


Plutarch and the'Greece of His Age 

man version made by Kaltwasser just one hundred 
years ago, is an excellent piece of work. The Lives 
have been frequently translated. 

About sixty miles northwest of the city of Athens 
near the road leading from Delphi to Lebadeia, mid¬ 
way between the gulf of Corinth and the northern 
end of the Euripus, lies to=day the town of Chae- 
roneia, or rather its modern representative, Capraena. 
Though never a municipality of much importance, its 
inhabitants, before the time of Plutarch, had been the 
spectators of many stirring events. Epaminondas 
called the plain near it the dancingqilot of Ares, an 
epithet that was abundantly justified by preceding 
and succeeding occurrences. Lying in a measure 
between northern and southern Greece it was rich in 
historical reminiscences and in traditions. Already 
known to Homer as Arne, it subsequently witnessed 
the countless hosts of Dareius and Xerxes pass be¬ 
neath its walls. Near it Philip of Macedon com¬ 
pletely overthrew the allied Thebans and Athenians, 
b. c. 338. In Plutarch’s time the mound erected in 
honor of the king’s soldiers who lost their lives here, 
was still in a fair state of preservation, and the oak 
under which x^lexander had erected his tent was yet 
standing. In 279 the Gauls passed over the plain of 
Chaeroneia leaving desolation in their track. Twenty^ 
eight years later the Boeotians were defeated near 
the town in a battle with the Aetolians. Still later, 
by a century and a half, Sulla inflicted a crushing 
blow on his enemies, for the most part Greeks, under 
113 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


the command of Archelaus, the lieutenant of Mithri- 
dates. It was two citizens of Chaeroneia who per¬ 
formed for the Roman general a service similar to 
that rendered to Xerxes by Ephialtes. In order to 
leave a memorial of his success he erected a trophy 
on the summit of an adjacent hill. Another trophy, 
dating from this time and of special significance to 
the Chaeroneans, was the statue of Lucius Lucullus, 
a Roman commander, that stood in their market¬ 
place. They had become involved in a quarrel with 
their old enemies, the Orchomenians, on the charge 
of having caused the death of a Roman officer and 
several of his attendants; but through the interposi¬ 
tion of Lucullus had obtained a verdict from the 
home government in their favor. 

But the pen is mightier than the sword. Posterity 
is not greatly interested in wars and battles in which 
no great principles are involved; besides, all sanguin¬ 
ary conflicts are of more or less local significance. 
Hence it is that Chaeroneia is chiefly known, not be¬ 
cause of the two hundred thousand men who lost 
their lives or limbs near it, but as the birthplace and 
lifelong residence of one of the besbknown characters 
in the literary history of the world. About half a 
score of years after the crucifixion, this august yet 
kindly personage, first saw the light in what was, even 
for Greece, an obscure town, but which he never left 
for any considerable time, until the day of his death, 
at a ripe old age. The visible remains of the first 
great battle fought here in historic times are the 
114 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


fragments of a colossal lion erected to commemorate, 
not a victory, but the valor of those who fell fighting 
for their country and for what they believed to be its 
freedom. There is also a village of some fifty houses, 
a church, a schoolliouse and a stone seat which its 
inhabitants fondly imagine to have been the property 
of their illustrious fellow townsman, and which they 
eagerly show as such, to the traveler. Small as the 
village is to-day, it can never have been a place of 
much importance, a fact that is attested by the scant 
remains of its ancient theater, one of the smallest in 
Greece. 

In Plutarch’s time the chief industry of his native 
town consisted in its trade in oil and the manu¬ 
facture of perfumes and unguents from the numerous 
flowers and herbs that grew in the vicinity. In con¬ 
formity to ancient usage, this business was chiefly 
carried on by slaves, while its citizens, having no 
political affairs to engage their attention, and but 
little interest in philosophical discussion, gave them¬ 
selves up largely to gossip and other equally profit¬ 
less ways of passing time. 

Plutarch was descended from one of the most prom¬ 
inent families of his native town. He received an 
excellent education, according to the standard of his 
day. He also seems to have given instruction in¬ 
formally and without pay, as he shared the prejudices 
of his countrymen against receiving compensation for 
such service. We do not know much of his private life 
or of his family connections. Living as he did the 
115 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


quiet life of a peaceable man, absorbed in his books 
and his studies and only appearing in public when 
his duties as a good citizen called him forth, there 
was little in his career to attract the attention of a 
biographer. Almost all that we know about him has 
to he gleaned from occasional references in his own 
writings. It has been aptly said of him that the 
prince of biographers is himself without a biographer. 
His father’s name is not recorded. That of his 
grandfather was Lamprias. We do not know how 
many brothers and sisters he had, though he speaks 
of two brothers with whom he lived on the most 
amicable terms. Of these, Timon is an interlocutor 
in the dialogue De Sera. His wife’s name was Ti- 
moxena. By her he had four sons and one daughter. 
The latter and the oldest son died when quite young. 

Plutarch’s wife seems to have been an excellent 
woman and to have shared her husband’s views as to 
the proper conduct of life. She was plain in dress 
and appearance, averse to show and parade, devoted 
to her husband, her children, and her household af¬ 
fairs. 

Plutarch made some journeys beyond the bounds 
of his native land; one at least as far as Alexandria 
in Egypt. He spent some time in Rome where he 
gave lectures in Greek; for as he himself tells us he 
never learned the Latin language well. He went 
thither on public business, and is thought to have 
visited other parts of Italy on a similar errand. His 
fame had preceded him to the imperial city where he 
116 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


was already known by reputation to some of the literati, 
and he embraced the opportunity to enlarge the circle 
of his acquaintances. Athens he visited a number of 
times, and Sparta at least once. Yet, notwithstanding 
his celebrity in his lifetime, and in striking contrast 
to his fame in modern times, he is not quoted by any 
extant Roman writer, and but rarely by his own 
countrymen. 

As a patriotic citizen and an admirer of all that was 
venerable and worthy of preservation in the history 
no less than in the traditions of Greece, Plutarch felt 
it incumbent upon him to discharge both civil and 
religious duties as occasion called him. He was a 
priest of Apollo to whose worship he was ardently de¬ 
voted and to whom he frequently refers in his 
works, among others in the De Sera. As a conse¬ 
quence he interested himself greatly in the religious 
festivals that occurred so frequently in Delphi near 
by. It is also plain from his writings that he kept 
open house. People who desired to learn, and all who 
took life seriously, were always welcome. In some of 
the young men who came to him for enlightenment, 
whom, nevertheless, we cannot regard as his pupils 
except in the Socratic sense, he took a lifelong in¬ 
terest. The choice of many of the subjects discussed 
in his lectures was probably accidental. They were 
proposed by persons who visited him, talked over at 
the time, but afterwards more fully investigated and 
the results written out. It this way light was thrown 
upon them both by the oral contributions of an in- 
117 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


telligent company and also by the aid of books, of 
which he had a large collection.* 

Plutarch was a man who strove not only to make 
others wiser, but also to become wiser himself. His 
aim was to be a living exemplar of the doctrines he 
professed and taught. He was a firm believer in plain 
living and high thinking. He disliked as strongly as 
he disliked anything the costly and luxurious ban¬ 
quets so much affected by the rich Romans of his 
day. The little company that so frequently came to¬ 
gether under his hospitable roof met, not to eat and 
drink, but to engage in serious and profitable conver¬ 
sation. The viands were plain—a secondary matter; 
the chief thing was the discussion. This often 
turned on the most trivial subjects, for the host seems 
to have thought with Terence: 

“ Homo sum, et nihil humani a me alienum puto.” 

Practical politics for a Greek of Plutarch’s day did 
not mean serious business, especially for the citizen of 
a small municipality like Chaeroneia. He had there¬ 
fore ample time for studying, lecturing and formu¬ 
lating his numerous writings. He was not only so 
fortunate as to have a good memory, but he began at 

* Students of German literature are reminded of a certain 
moral and intellectual similarity between Plutarch and Gellert. 
The latter, though a man of much less natural ability, had all of 
Plutarch’s kindliness, moral and religious earnestness, sympathy 
for those in distress, and the same popularity among all classes 
from prince to peasant. Both were equally religious, though one 
was a heathen and the other a Christian; both preserved the 
same serenity of mind and cheerfulness of heart in a time of 
national degradation and immorality. 

118 



Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


an early age to take notes on what he read; in this 
way he accumulated the large stock of quotations so 
profusely scattered through his writings. In fact this 
practice of depending upon others for his information 
must have done a good deal toward weakening his 
power of original thought, and h e usually enforces a 
precept by an apt quotation rather than by arguments 
that he has himself elaborated. On the other hand, 
his frequent reference to older authors has given a 
special value to his writings in the eyes of the 
moderns. Though not quoted by any extant Roman 
writer and rarely by a Greek he must have been much 
read soon after his death, and at no time was he 
wholly forgotten. His early and continued popular¬ 
ity doubtless contributed not a little to the preserva¬ 
tion of so large a portion of his writings; but it also 
put into circulation under his name a number of spu¬ 
rious works—just how many cannot be determined. 
Yet it is certain that some genuine writings have been 
lost. Among the earliest printed books were portions 
of Plutarch. 

Plutarch is a prolix but not a pedantic nor a tedi 
ous writer. Though he displays immense erudition 
he does so without effort. An apt quotation from 
one of the poets, a telling anecdote of some celebrated 
man or woman, or historical incident seems always 
ready to his hand, and waiting for a suitable place to 
be used. He is completely master of the extensive 
stock of knowledge stored up in his mind ox his notes. 
He is a capital story-teller. He knows how to seize 
119 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


the salient features of a situation, and can place them 
before the reader in the most effective light. A large 
proportion of the anecdotes of illustrious men, belong¬ 
ing to a remoter antiquity, current in modern litera¬ 
ture, have found their way into it through the me¬ 
dium of his writings. He often reminds one of Hero¬ 
dotus notwithstanding his antipathy to this author, 
and whose veracity he vigorously impeaches in one 
of his essays—assuming, of course, that De Maligni- 
tateis really the work of Plutarch. Like Herodotus, 
he often wanders from the main theme of his narra¬ 
tive, but never looses sight of it, and always returns 
to it without unduly distracting the reader’s attention. 
Like Herodotus, he is often reminded of a “ little 
story” that he forthwith proceeds to tell; and, as in 
the case of Herodotus, the reader feels that some¬ 
thing of value has been added to the narrative by the 
story. Like Herodotus, too, he exhibits a strange 
mixture of credulity with sterling good sense. So it 
happens that the Father of History and the man 
whom Jean Paul Richter calls the Biographical 
Shakespeare of Universal History often meet on com¬ 
mon ground, in spite of the aversion of the one to 
the other. Of course the canvas on which the his¬ 
torian paints is much larger; the interests he dis¬ 
cusses are much more momentous; but he does 
not treat them with greater seriousness than does 
the biographer and moralist. 

Perhaps the most succinct statement of Plutarch’:; 
creed is a passage in Isis and Osiris. He says: 

120 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


“ For God is not a being that is without intelligence, 
without a soul, and subject to men, but we regard 
these as gods who constantly and in sufficient meas¬ 
ure furnish us these fruits, and there are neither 
different gods among different peoples, some barba¬ 
rian some Greek, some northern, some southern; but 
just as the sun and moon, heaven and earth and sea 
are common to all, but are differently designated by 
different peoples, so there is but one intelligence 
that arranges all those things about us in order and 
one Providence to which other powers that direct all 
things are made subordinate, some of which have, by 
custom, received different honors and appellations 
among different peoples. The initiates also employ 
different symbols, some clearer, others more obscure, 
that lead the mind to what is divine, though not with¬ 
out risk (of being misunderstood). For some, being 
altogether led astray, fall into superstition; others 
again, having steered clear of superstition, as if it were 
a bog, fall into atheism as from a precipice. On this 
account it is especially important to take reason that 
is born of philosophy, as a guide through these mys¬ 
teries, in order that we may comprehend rightly 
everything that is said and done, in its true signifi¬ 
cance.” 

Plutarch is a philosopher in the sense that every 
man of sound mind may be a philosopher; but he is 
not, strictly speaking, a philosophical thinker. He 
does not hold to any carefully elaborated and con¬ 
sistent system. While he has much to say about char- 
121 



Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 

acter and conduct, he rarely attempts to fathom the 
motives that underlie and influence conduct. He is 
at times inconsistent with himself because his views on 
transcendental problems have not been systematically 
wrought out and firmly fixed. If he can quote the 
authority of some great name in support of a position 
he takes, it generally suffices him. Not unfrequently 
he cites contradictory authorities both for facts and 
opinions, then declares which he prefers without 
giving a reason for his preference. 

Plutarch’s Moralia or Moral Writings are so called 
for the reason that they are more or less concerned 
with ethical problems. But they also treat inci¬ 
dentally of matters religious, political, literary, psy¬ 
chological, physical and metaphysical or philosophi¬ 
cal. Many of his treatises are in the form of dia¬ 
logues, in which he doubtless had before his mind’s 
eye his great prototype Plato, little as he is able to 
fathom his speculative profundity. Sometimes his 
discussions are addressed to a real or imaginary 
interlocuter, who has, however, little to say. His dis¬ 
courses may be regarded as sermons or lectures 
addressed to a small circle of interested listeners, or 
even to a single person, though in reality intended 
for a larger public. The homiletic character of many 
of Plutarch’s discourses is also attested by the fact 
that he regards morals as closely connected with 
religion. He is the bitter enemy of atheism, because, 
as he maintains, it leads to a dissolute and aimless 
life. He was, however, in no sense an innovator, but 
122 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


ardently attached to the traditions of his countrymen. 
He seeks to discover a hidden meaning in the popu¬ 
lar myths and cults, and to explain them on philo¬ 
sophical grounds His attitude in this respect has 
contributed a good deal to the popular interest in the 
man. He is a self=consecrated priest of the established 
religion which he defended, not because it was to his 
personal profit to do so, but from conviction. As he 
will not or can not discard the cults of his day, or 
treat them as founded on mere figments of the imagin¬ 
ation, it is incumbent upon him to explain them as 
best he can. And he seems to be convinced that he 
has been entirely successful. 

Not only is he an avowed foe of atheism, but 
he is an equally vigorous opponent of superstition. 
Yet it is often impossible to see where he draws the 
line between what he regards as rational faith and 
mere credulity; between his owm creed and that of 
the populace. In truth, the task is not an easy one 
for anybody. The German nicely designates the 
close proximity of faith and credulity by the two 
terms Glaube and Aberglaube. There was hardly 
a man in the ancient world of whom we have any 
considerable knowledge, even though he may have 
been an avowed atheist, who was wholly without 
superstition. The destiny of individuals and nations 
was so often decided by influences so mysterious and 
inscrutable that it might well be attributed to the 
miraculous interposition of the gods. Even in our 
day, when the laws of nature are better understood 
123 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


than ever before, men still feel themselves the sport 
of unseen forces and powers that often seem to be 
malevolent or benevolent for no discoverable reason, 
and which, it is hard to believe, are not controlled by 
a supernal will. 

Plutarch’s merits as a historical writer are seriously 
impaired by his readiness to believe everything that 
comes to him through tradition or record. Still one 
ought not to blame him for not being what he does 
not profess to be. His main purpose is not to attain 
historical truth, but to discover what will “point a 
moral, or adorn a tale.” Had he been other than he 
was he would never have been so assiduously read. 

Plutarch fully recognized the importance of the 
family in the social fabric. This is the more to his 
credit for the reason that the trend of public opinion 
was against him in this respect. All the evidence 
we have goes to show that he was a judicious father, 
a loving husband, a dutiful son, and an affectionate 
brother. He is thus a zealous defender of the virtues 
he himself exemplified. A knowledge of liis char¬ 
acter, as shown by his conduct, contributes not 
a little to the pleasure the modern reader finds in 
the perusal of his pages. How often, alas! do we 
discover on closer examination a great gulf between 
what men write and what they do! How often does 
a knowledge of the private life of a great writer mar 
the interest we take in what he writes! 

Though a man of kind heart and polished manners, 
judged by the standard of his time, Plutarch was no 
1 24 : 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


reformer. Indeed, no reform was possible by means 
of his didactic method. He does not denounce 
vigourously the corruptions of his time. He is far 
from employing the drastic speech of his Roman 
contemporaries. It is probable that in his secluded 
home he did not know or even suspect the moral 
degradation of the world around him; it is certain 
he had not fathomed it. He knows something of the 
Jewish religion, and might have known more, had he 
cared to inform himself. He might have heard 
Paul’s preaching; and Christianity had gained a firm 
foothold in Greece before Plutarch’s death. But he 
was too much of a Greek to take any interest in what 
had no relation either to Greek religion or tradition. 
The new faith in virtue of its origin, was foolishness 
to him. He considered the Hellenic religion good 
enough for anybody and everybody. It might indeed 
need purification from some of its grosser elements 
and exotic excrescences; but more than this was 
wholly unnecessary. 

Nothing that Plutarch says exhibits in a more 
striking light the humaneness of his disposition 
than his exhortations to the kind treatment of brutes. 
He believes that the good man is kind to his beast. 
He regards it a duty to care for the horse and the 
dog that have served him well, when they become old 
and useless. He seems to think that animals are 
not without a measure of reason and that they have 
to a limited extent, the power to decide between 
right and wrong. Though possessed of only a modi- 
125 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


cum of intelligence, this at least cannot be entirely 
denied to them, any more than it can be denied to a 
bad man. A certain measure of reason is the gift of 
nature; perfect and virtuous reason is the result of 
practice and instruction. The reasoning powers of 
many animals are, to an extent, on a level with those 
of man; they differ not so much in quality as in 
quantity. It is right, therefore, to use but not to 
abuse them. Cruelty to animals is evidence of a 
base heart. Those who treat them harshly usually 
accentuate their bad traits in their dealings with men. 
Our treatment of animals is, therefore, in some sort 
and often to a considerable extent, an index of how 
we treat our fellow beings. Plutarch finds the lower 
animals in some respects more rational than men. 
They never eat or drink more than enough to satisfy 
hunger and thirst; nor do they give way to any un¬ 
natural or excessive appetites. He is somewhat 
inclined to condemn the use of animal food; but, at 
any rate, animals must not be cruelly dealt with to 
make them more palatable, nor put to death by 
lingering and inhuman methods. He had in view 
more particularly some of the practices prevalent in 
Rome in his day,—practices that were, in truth, horri¬ 
ble in the extreme. It is no wonder that he names 
them only to condemn them. The extreme modern¬ 
ness of Plutarch in this matter becomes the more 
strikingly evident when we remember that classical 
antiquity not only very seldon has a kind word for 
irrational creatures, but was wont to treat them with 
126 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 

extreme harshness. This was particularly the case 
among the Romans, 

Plutarch regards the soul as composed of two parts. 
One part seeks after truth and light; the other is 
under the influence of the passions, and liable to 
error. The first is divine, the second carnal. In so 
far as a man heeds the monitions of the former he 
will follow the path of virtue. Practical virtue, virtue 
in action, is wisdom; vice is error. In order to be 
virtuous it is only necessary to listen to the voice of 
reason. Plutarch does not doubt that virtue can be 
taught. To teach virtue consists largely in making it 
attractive to the young. Reason does not annihilate 
the passions; it merely directs them toward a goal 
that it has marked out. Virtue consists in “the 
golden mean ”— wdh ayav — in doing neither too 
much nor too little. Bravery is a virtue whose place 
is between cowardice and rashness. Mildness or 
kindness is a virtue: its place is between stolidity and 
cruelty, just as the place of liberality is midway be¬ 
tween the extremes, stinginess and prodigality. He 
adduces a number of proofs to establish the position 
that the passions are corporeal and the reason super- 
sensuous; in a correct system of pedagogy a proper 
use is to be made of the latter for controlling and 
wisely directing the former toward rational ends. It 
is in every man’s power to be virtuous under all cir¬ 
cumstances, but happiness, or rather good fortune, is 
dependent upon many things. A virtuous man may 
enjoy peace of mind at all times, while the largest 
127 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 

possessions are of no real value to a bad man. Vice 
is an anomaly in the constitution of society. Tran¬ 
quillity of mind, calmness of soul, are not to be 
sought in a state of inactivity and in retirement. The 
affirmative of this proposition has led many people 
into error. Disgusted with the world, they seek peace 
by withdrawing from its turmoil and hurly=burly, too 
often only to meet with disappointment. There is 
not a condition in life from which no consolation can 
be extracted, and it is the province of reason to dis¬ 
cover how this may be done. In what way this is 
possible he shows by a number of examples from 
biography. What many persons at first looked upon 
as misfortunes not unfrequently turned out to be a 
blessing to themselves and to the world. On the 
other hand, many persons who were regarded by 
almost every one as among the most fortunate, were 
found to have a skeleton in their closet. When the 
sage suffers a loss, he does not grieve over it, but 
places a higher value on what is left to him. No 
man is so poor, no man has lost so much, but that 
there remains in his possession something for which 
he can felicitate himself. Neither is any one so 
destitute but that he might be still worse off, and the 
most wretched are certain to meet with others more 
needy than themselves. On the physical side of our 
nature we are all subject to what, for want of a better 
name, may be called chance; but this is not true of 
our moral and intellectual side. It is therefore within 
our power to secure indestructible and inalienable 
128 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


possessions: insight, love of knowledge, virtue, the 
consciousness of being and doing right. Not even 
the fear of death disquiets the good man, for he knows 
that after his dissolution he shall enter into a better 
state of existence than this life; the bad man clings 
to life because of the dread uncertainty before him 
after death. As a last resource, if a man’s sufferings 
become too great to be endured, he can make an end 
of them with his own hand. 

To Plutarch, no riches, no purely external posses¬ 
sions, are so conducive to peace of mind and cheer¬ 
fulness of heart, as a soul that has kept itself free 
from evil thoughts and acts. For a soul that has 
held itself aloof from contamination every day is a 
festival; the world, a temple in which God dwells and 
which he has adapted to the fulfilment of man’s 
wants. By the proper use of reason men may con¬ 
trol their passions and find satisfaction in the enjoy¬ 
ment of what is within their reach. They may reflect 
with complacency on the past and look forward to 
the future with hope. A man’s unhappiness is caused 
rather by the pains of the soul than those of the 
body. Diseases of the body are due to its nature, 
but disease of the soul is man’s own work. More¬ 
over the maladies of the soul are curable, a condition 
of things that ought to afford us much consolation. 
Though the sufferings and diseases to which the 
body is subject take many forms, those that a cor¬ 
rupt heart and a debased soul send forth, as from a 
perennial fountain, are much more numerous. Again, 
129 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


corporal diseases may be detected by their external 
symptoms; the maladies of the soul are hidden. 
They are the more dangerous from the fact that, in 
most instances, the patient himself is not aware of 
them. The greatest malady of the soul is the want 
of reason and good sense, because they disqualify 
men from recognizing their own baseness and the 
remedies necessary for a cure. Few persons who are 
guilty of wrong'doing realize that they have com¬ 
mitted transgressions; oftentimes they even think 
they have acted wisely and judiciously. They call 
their anger, bravery; their envy and jealousy, emula¬ 
tion; their cowardice, prudence; while it never occurs 
to them to seek the aid of a philosopher for the 
diseases of the soul until they are incurable and have 
become so virulent that they drive the patient to the 
commission of the most diabolical crimes. 

From these premises there follows the inevitable 
conclusion that the chief end of man is progress in 
virtue, or, w T e might better say, in all the virtues, 
though virtue in reality is but one. Our progress in 
philosophy is the result of constant and uninter¬ 
rupted effort. Parallel to this is our progress in vir¬ 
tue; if we relax our efforts for a moment we incur 
the danger of letting vice get a hold upon us. He 
who is always in conflict with vice, with his evil 
passions, may rest assured that he is making progress 
in virtue. But our love for virtue must partake of 
the nature of a passion; in it we ought to find our 
highest gratification, so that if we are interrupted in 

130 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


our pursuit we shall long to return to it. The aim 
and purpose of our philosophy must be practical, and 
it is chiefly in our activity as a citizen and a man in 
all the multiplex relations of life, that we may test 
our love for it. Yet, the true philosopher is not 
ostentatious, and it makes little difference to him 
whether the world recognizes him as such or not. 
He ought to seek internal satisfaction, not public 
acknowledgement. Herein Plutarch takes his stand 
in opposition to many of his countrymen who aspired 
to the name and title of philosophers, but did little 
to deserve them. How men of sense regarded them 
has been pointed out elsewhere. 

We may also measure our progress in philosophy, 
that is, in virtue, by our love of the beautiful and the 
good; by our attitude towards praise and blame. 
We ought neither to seek the one nor avoid the 
other. If we really desire to correct our faults and 
shortcomings, we will be ready at all times to listen 
to advice and to heed criticism; nor will we conceal 
any part of our nature or cover up any of our acts in 
order to seem what we are not. Nevertheless, when 
we are firmly convinced that we are in the right, it is 
our duty to go forward in the course we have marked 
out for ourselves, no matter what others may think 
or say. 

There is no stronger incentive to noble deeds and 
an upright life than the lives of the great and the 
good of all ages. It was mainly under the impulse 
of this belief that Plutarch compiled his parallel 
131 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


biographies. In the nature of the case their value as 
truthful records is greatly impaired by the stand¬ 
point from which they were written; but it is this 
fact that has given them an attractiveness and a cur¬ 
rency such as no other works of their kind have 
equalled. Plutarch’s Lives have for centuries been 
the monitors of youth and the solace of the aged. 
They have been read and admired wherever men have 
honored courage, fortitude, intrepidity, self-control, 
patriotism, humaneness—in short, every trait of 
character that can be classed among the virtues. 
Greeks and Romans, ancients and moderns, learned 
and illiterate, rich and poor, have been fascinated by 
them, and it is on them that their author’s fame 
chiefly rests. To many persons, in fact to the great 
majority of readers, Plutarch is known only as the 
writer of charming biographies; yet these constitute 
a good deal less than half his extant works. 

Plutarch holds that men find the path of virtue 
and continue to walk in it, by reflection, deliberation, 
introspection; by a systematic, rigid and continued 
self-examination—in other words, by a practical ap¬ 
plication of the methods that philosophy points out. 
Man is sane and sound only so long as he puts into 
practice the principles of virtue. So long as he is 
the slave of his passions he is in need of a physician. 
Philosophy is the sanitation of the soul; the genuine 
philosopher is the real physician of the soul. In 
pursuance of his chosen vocation, Plutarch wrote a 
number of essays for the purpose of giving instruction 
132 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


upon the best methods of controlling the different 
passions to which men are subject. Their purport 
easily becomes evident from a glance at their titles. 
They show that he has carefully observed and studied 
men, at least those that constitute the various higher 
classes and give the prevailing tone to society. Many 
of these essays are still of interest and well repay 
perusal. They contain many acute observations and 
piquant remarks. 

For Plutarch the old mythology is sufficient as a 
basis for a religious belief. Like most of the Greek 
philosophers who incline toward theism, he main¬ 
tains that myths are, to a greater or less extent, cor¬ 
ruptions of primitive verities. These originated in 
the popular mind and received artistic form at the 
hands of the poets. Underlying them all there is 
truth enough and beauty enough to show the aspira¬ 
tion of the soul after higher things, and they form 
the basis of a purely theistic belief. Plutarch’s un¬ 
bounded faith in human reason leads him to believe 
that it alone is entirely sufficient to enable any and 
every man to lead a virtuous life. His advice to 
every one is, in substance: get all the light you can; 
use the reason you are endowed with by the creator; 
acquire additional knowledge and wisdom every day; 
make your inward life an object of daily study and 
reflection,—if you do these things you will lead a vir¬ 
tuous life. Those persons who have no love for the 
beautiful and the good, no desire to become virtuous, 
fail because they neglect to cultivate the reason with 
133 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


which every man is originally endowed. They grope 
in the darkness cast about them by their own pas¬ 
sions, and refuse to follow the lamp that reason holds 
up before them. Plutarch’s optimism; his faith in 
the power of the intellect to make the world better, is 
especially remarkable in view of the fact that his 
countrymen, notwithstanding their general intel¬ 
ligence, notwithstanding the large number of great 
men in almost every department of knowledge born 
in Greek lands, in spite of the fact that Greece was 
the native hearth of philosophy, had for centuries 
been retrograding morally, intellectually and politi¬ 
cally. So hard is it to divorce most men from a 
theory to which they have attached themselves. His 
mistake arose from his seeing all men in the mirror 
of his own thoughts. He believed that the whole 
human race could be influenced by the motives that 
influenced himself, and that all could, if they wished, 
be constantly engaged in the search for light and 
wisdom in the way he sought them. This radical 
error he inherited from his master, Plato, and it is 
strange that he did not detect it. He seems never to 
have suspected that he might be mistaken. 

Plutarch’s religion is wholly without enthusiasm 
and his morality has in it not a tinge of emotion. 
Do right alw r ays, because by such a course of life 
you will enjoy the largest measure of mundane hap¬ 
piness that can fall to the lot of a mortal, and be a 
benefactor to all who come within the circle of your 
influence. Make the best of every situation in which 

134 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


you may be placed. Do not take too seriously the 
hindrances to a virtuous life that you may find in 
your way, because you can remove them if you will. 
No matter what your station in life, do not expect 
your path to be always a smooth one. If you keep 
these things in mind you will probably live long,— 
you are sure to live happily. 

Plutarch’s views regarding the education of 
women are far in advance of his age. He follows his 
master, Plato, in vindicating for them the same 
virtues that belong to men. His treatise often desig¬ 
nated The Virtues of Women is chiefly a record of 
heroic deeds that have been performed by the so^ 
called weaker sex. He admits that the worth or 
efficiency of women is not necessarily of the same 
quality as that of men, but he contends that its 
ethical value is equal and its intrinsic merit in no 
wise inferior. The woman who has performed a 
noble deed is entitled to just as much credit as a 
a man. He takes issue with Thucydides for say¬ 
ing that the best woman is the one of whom least is 
said either for good or evil. He also takes issue with 
the thoroughly Greek sentiment, though perhaps 
more pronounced in Athens than elsewhere, that 
woman is at most little else than a plaything and a 
convenience for man; and that her highest function 
is to bear legitimate male children. According to 
Plutarch the wife is to be the equal partner in the 
management of the household. When it is well con¬ 
ducted she deserves equal commendation with the 
135 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


husband. He would open a wider sphere for women; 
train them intellectually, and awaken in them an 
interest in the larger affairs of life. Consistently with 
these views, Plutarch assigned to his wife an honor¬ 
able place in his household. She received guests in 
her husband’s absence; sat at table with him and in¬ 
terested herself in public as well as private affairs. 
While this was in contravention of the custom of his 
day, it was in harmony with a faintly discernible 
trend of public opinion, probably the result of Roman 
influence. That the innovation made slow progress 
is plain not only from the later history of Greece but 
also from Greek social usages in our own day. When 
we take cognizance of the unhappy state of his country 
we are inclined to wonder at Plutarch’s uniform 
serenity of mind. He never indulges in satire or 
sneer, while many of his contemporaries did both. 
But we must remember that his philosophy had, above 
and beyond everything else, a practical purpose, and 
that in a rather material sense. Men’s misfortunes 
are their own fault and therefore preventible; or they 
are not their own fault and therefore unavoidable. 
In either case nothing is gained by grieving over them. 

It will be evident from a perusal of the De Sera 
that optimism is the basis of Plutarch’s philosophy. 
Men can do right if they will, and if they do right 
they can not fail to be happy. There is a superin¬ 
tending Providence that in the end rectifies all 
wrong and injustice. He seems to hold with Goethe 
that “Every sin is punished here below,” though the 
136 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


punishment does not end in this life. Retribution 
is not delayed until after death; it visits the sinner in 
this world. Or if he is so fortunate as to end his 
days in peace, so far as mortals can see, he entails a 
curse upon his descendants. The iniquities of 
the fathers are visited upon the children unto the 
third and fourth generation. But the punishment of 
the wicked does not end with this life. The soul 
bears the imprint of its crimes after it has left the 
body. That God sometimes permits a wicked man to 
end his days in peace but that He has fastened a curse 
on his offspring, is a prominent article in the creed 
of many of the older Greek writers. It is often re¬ 
ferred to by Herodotus. So firmly convinced is he 
that all wrong-doing must be atoned for that when he 
finds an instance where the law does not appear to 
hold good he confesses himself at a loss to account 
for the failure of its operation. Not only individuals 
but nations as well must expiate crimes committed 
and wrongs done by their representatives in an 
official capacity. And there is no doubt that the in¬ 
fluence of this belief was most wholesome. Much of 
what Plutarch says on this point is probably fanci¬ 
ful, especially when he appeals to the testimony of 
history; but what he records is in keeping with 
his philosophy and has therefore a strong personal 
interest. Moreover, he furnishes us with some in¬ 
teresting testimony as to the prevalence of a belief in 
rewards and punishments among men outside the 
pale of Christianity. 


137 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


Plutarch’s ideal of duty is a high one. The ful¬ 
filment of some duty is incumbent upon every man 
so long as he lives. It is as imperative in old age as 
in early life. When a man is quit of his obligations 
to his children, he owes a service to his country and 
to his fellow citizens in a narrower sense. From 
this service, only the impairment of his facilities or 
death may release him. As every man is born into 
the state, and as, in a certain sense, he is a man only 
in so far as he discharges his obligations to the state, 
he has no choice in the matter. Herein lies a duty 
from which there is no possible escape. But the 
mere holding of an office is not the only or even the 
chief test of the good citizen. His duties in a pri¬ 
vate capacity are no less important, and if less con¬ 
spicuous are equally far reaching. The good citizen 
is the philosopher in his true sphere: good citizen¬ 
ship is philosophy in action—applied philosophy. 
It is only in actual life that the philosopher can put 
his theories to the test. The form of government is 
a matter of minor importance. Plutarch regards 
monarchy, as on the whole, the best, but he is not 
radical. In this he agrees with the majority of 
Greek philosophers, most of whom were generally 
more or less dissatisfied with the turbulent Athenian 
democracy. That monarchy is best where the head of 
the state is what Plutarch would have him be, a philos¬ 
opher. But even the most absolute monarch should 
not regard himself above law; he is to be its executor. 
Moreover, it is his duty not only to obey cheerfully 
188 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


the written law that binds prince and people alike, 
but also that unwritten law that reason has implanted 
in the soul of every man of sound mind. Eulers are 
in a sense the servants of God whose duty it is to ap¬ 
portion rewards and punishments according to their 
deserts, to all that are under their authority. 

After all, man’s first and chief duty is to himself. 
His quest for light, for knowledge, for truth is never to 
be intermitted. He is to take his bearings, as it were, 
frequently, in order to see what progress he is 
making. If his aims are noble, his purposes 
right, and his motives pure, he will not only 
make daily progress in virtue, but when he is 
called to leave this world he can depart in peace be¬ 
cause he will have the consciousness that it is the 
better for his having lived in it. 

Having thus given a short sketch of Plutarch as a 
man and a citizen let us proceed to examine briefly 
the times in which he lived as supplementary to what 
has already been said under this general head in 
treating of Seneca. What had Eoman rule done for 
his country? What was the social and economic con¬ 
dition of Greece and Greek lands in the first century 
of the Christian era? Unfortunately our information 
on these points is exceedingly scanty. In fact, po¬ 
litical economy is a recent science; in ancient times 
the lot of the poor was little taken note of. It was 
everywhere a hard one, and the care of the indigent, 
so much insisted on in the New Testament, is almost 
the first sign of an awakening in this respect. But 

139 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 

it did not originate with the government; that had 
other ends in view. That the Roman policy toward 
the proletariat in the imperial capital only made 
matters worse, is well known. When we remember 
how much has been done in recent years by legisla¬ 
tion in every civilized country for the amelioration of 
the condition of the low T est classes and how much 
still remains to be done, we can picture to ourselves 
the state of society where all this was omitted. 

When we remember further that up to a compara¬ 
tively recent period commerce, trade and manufactures 
flourished, in so far as they can be said to have flour¬ 
ished, not because they were fostered by governments, 
but almost in spite of them, it is not surprising that 
they received little attention at the hands of the 
Greeks and Romans, either individually or collec¬ 
tively. It has already been stated that the sole object 
of the ruling powers was to raise the largest amount 
of revenue, not to equalize the burdens on all the 
subjects. On no question is ancient thought so crude 
as upon economics. The blight of slavery that made 
free labor to a certain extent disgraceful, and a con¬ 
dition of things that hindered the establishment of 
manufacturies on a large scale, tells the sorrowful 
story. 

In his attitude toward slavery, Plutarch does 
not seem to hold as advanced views as Seneca 
and some of the better men of his age and pre¬ 
ceding times. Yet he did not endorse the preva¬ 
lent opinion, embodied in legistation, that a slave is 

140 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


a soulless thing, though the justice of emancipation 
occupied his attention but little. Here again we find 
his practical ideas in the foreground. He is con¬ 
cerned to make the best of the situation as he finds 
it. Slavery exists, is an ineradicable element of or¬ 
ganized society and is coextensive with the human 
race. The best that the philosopher can do is to 
make sages of slave=holders, to the end that they treat 
their bondmen with justice and humaneness. Com¬ 
pare the anecdotes of Plato and Archytas in De Sera, 
Chap. 5. According to Plutarch slaves have souls 
like other human beings, and are capable of mental 
and moral improvement; consequently masters have 
duties to perform toward them that are just as plain 
and just as imperative as those due to persons 
on the same social level with themselves. 

The prosperity of nations rests mainly upon the 
numbers and intelligence of its middle classes. It 
can everywhere be measured by the rise of this 
class. What wonder then that the nations were 
poor among whom it scarcely existed? Rome could 
not go on plundering interminably, and the riches 
of its provinces in time became exhausted because 
not replenished. All that the ancient world has 
left upon record for us, proceeds upon the assump¬ 
tion of a large body of slaves and a small body of free 
citizens, and breathes a contempt for labor and trade. 
In most of the Greek states the commercial and 
manufacturing class consisted chiefly of resident 
aliens who were also slave-holders, and no citizen was 
141 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 

so poor that he did not own at least one slave. To be 
a slaveowner was a badge of respectability even for 
those who were not citizens. In the Greek states, so 
long as they were free polities, war and religion oc¬ 
cupied all the time and attention of the citizens, ex¬ 
cept that small body that were interested in philo¬ 
sophical pursuits. When they were no longer free 
and no longer had serious affairs in which to employ 
their time, they spent most of it in idle gossip or as 
the Acts tell us, “in hearing or telling some new 
thing.” What legislation they were still permitted 
to engage in never concerned matters of grave im¬ 
port. They decreed crowns and statues to real or sup¬ 
posed benefactors, only to annul their decrees when 
those whom they were intended to honor happened 
to incur the displeasure of the legislators or to 
fall into disgrace with the higher powers. Then 
there were deputations between different states about 
boundary disputes, about festivals, about claims and 
counter claims of all sorts, the sending of which was 
often debated with a solemnity that makes us wonder 
how the participants could themselves fail to see their 
farcical character. Generally the game at stake was 
the favor of the emperor, each party striving to out¬ 
bid the other in professions of loyalty or to outvie it 
in the length of its bill for services rendered. When, 
as was frequently the case, these delegations did not 
find the emperor in Rome, they had, of course, to follow 
him into provinces or to await his return. This re¬ 
quired time that, we may be sure, was in most cases 
142 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


ungrudgingly given. Instead of directing their en¬ 
ergies into channels of activity and trying by honest 
work to better their worldly condition it was talk, 
talk with the Greeks, and talk without end. 

There is no stronger evidence of their fondness for 
discussion and for listening to the spoken word than 
Greek literature itself. The historians are in the 
habit of stating the case of opposing parties by ha¬ 
rangues which they put into the mouth of a repre¬ 
sentative of each. Greek poetry consists in a great 
measure of dialogue. Philosophy was chiefly de¬ 
veloped by means of oral discussion. Comedy, even 
after it was no longer represented on the stage, still 
appears as dialogue and not in the usual form of the 
satire. Among its richest legacies to posterity is its 
oratory, and in it we have the spoken word in its 
most effective form; but it still represents words 
rather than deeds, and belongs for the most part to 
the declining age of Greece. A solitary thinker like 
Kant was wholly foreign to Greek ideas. So per¬ 
sistently has this trait remained a characteristic of 
the Hellenes that many of their best friends deplore 
their fondness for petty politics; their sleepless anx¬ 
iety to assist in the management of the government 
instead of turning their attention to bettering their 
material condition by a steady devotion to private 
business. Many of the rich and welbto-do Greeks 
live outside the kingdom of Greece where their lin¬ 
gual activity is circumscribed and they are compelled 
by circumstances to turn their energies into more 
H3 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


profitable channels. Rarely has a man, distinguished 
for eloquence alone, profoundly influenced the course 
of human events. Contemporaries are unanimous in 
ascribing to Julius Caesar oratorical gifts of the 
highest order; but he preferred to make his mark as 
a doer of deeds rather than as a maker of phrases. 

In Rome the economic conditions were somewhat 
different from those prevailing in Greece and the 
East, yet Rome was not a commercial state. It was 
founded on military power, extended by valor and 
endurance in war, and when there were no more 
worlds to conquer, the forces that had been turned 
against external enemies began to be turned against 
herself. Rome was rich while she had other countries 
to plunder; when this was no longer possible her 
decay began. And these countries, by which we 
mean all the provinces outside of the city, were rich 
so long as the fertility of their soil continued and 
their mines were productive. That Rome’s moral 
decline antedated her economic retrogression by 
centuries is familiar to every reader of ancient history, 
but it is only the latter that we are concerned with here. 

Money was not used for purposes of production, 
but for the purchase of articles of luxury and display. 
Much of what had been accumulated in the capital 
flowed eastward and disappeared. Italy gradually 
passed into the hands of a small number of largelanded 
proprietors, whose vast estates were cultivated by 
persons who had no interest in maintaining their 
fertility. Great numbers of free citizens flocked to 
144 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


Home to enjoy the doles distributed to the populace 
at stated intervals; to feast their eyes on the bloody 
spectacles, so frequently and so magnificently given; 
and to die, only to leave room to be filled by the con¬ 
stantly inflowing stream. The empire existed for 
the City, its capital. We have already spoken of the 
strange fascination it exercised over all who had once 
been under its spell. We may safely assume that of 
the eighty thousand Romans put to death by Mith- 
ridates in his dominions, a considerable portion had 
gone abroad in the hope of enriching themselves in 
order to spend their gains in the capital. Doubtless, 
too, so far afield, trade was less despised than at the 
seat of government. The empire built, and for a 
time kept in repair, those magnificent highways that 
are still the admiration of all who see them. But they 
served military purposes almost exclusively. When 
no longer needed they were suffered to fall into de¬ 
cay. They were not constructed to facilitate com¬ 
mercial intercourse, and contributed little to the eco¬ 
nomic welfare of the empire. When the lack of 
local improvements was sufficiently felt and the peo¬ 
ple were not too much impoverished, which was sel¬ 
dom the case, to bear the necessary financial burdens 
these w r ere undertaken by the local authorities. But 
there is reason to believe that some of the provinces, 
notably the Grecian, became poorer and poorer from 
year to year. The capital drained the province; the 
people lost heart, and gave themselves up to the apa 
thy of indifference or despair. 

145 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 

It was the evil destiny of the Greek polities that 
they could never be brought to act together for any 
length of time; nor did all of them ever act together 
in any common enterprise. And they learned noth¬ 
ing from experience. The misfortunes resulting from 
this centripetal tendency were pointed out time and 
again by writers and orators, but to no purpose. 
Local pride always outweighed the dictates of reason 
or even of common prudence. Had Greece presented 
a united front, under competent leadership, it would 
have been a hard task for even Rome to subdue it. 
But it was impossible for the different states to for¬ 
get their reciprocal animosities: the increasing pros¬ 
perity of one was usually the signal for others to 
turn their arms against it. In this way all of them 
were gradually weakened and thus became a com¬ 
paratively easy prey to any strong foreign foe that 
might choose to attack them. Their subjugation by 
Rome vras by far the greatest misfortune that ever 
befell them. Philip of Macedon and his successors 
were at least more than half Greeks, and had a good 
deal of sympathy with Greek ideas. The Romans 
had none whatever. Still, cruelly as they carried out 
the work of subjugation in certain localities, when 
their first animosity was appeased they seem not to 
have interfered systematically with existing muni¬ 
cipal administrations. Yet the financial pressure be¬ 
came harder as the people grew poorer, and matters 
went from bad to worse. The wickedness of Corinth, 
the most Roman of Greek cities after it had been re- 
146 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


built under imperial auspices, affords striking evi¬ 
dence of what Roman influence meant on the morals 
of a Greek polity. 

It is a matter of common knowledge what Roman 
internecine war brought upon Italy. To a certain 
extent the same evils were shared by Greece. Three 
of the fiercest battles between the contestants for the 
principate were fought in or near Greece. The 
Greeks were always on the losing side, though her 
soldiers were not numerously represented in the 
Roman armies. These battles did but accelerate a 
retrograde movement that had been quite marked at 
least since the Mithridatic war, though it did not 
begin then. The population was rapidly decreasing. 
Plutarch says that in his time all Greece could not 
furnish three thousand heavy-armed soldiers. This 
statement must not be taken too literally; it can 
hardly mean that there were not this number of able- 
bodied men in the whole of Greece; it must mean 
that it did not contain three thousand citizens suffi¬ 
ciently welbto^do to enable them to support them¬ 
selves in the field. In the days of their glory some 
of the smallest Greek states were better off than this 
would indicate. It is certainly proof positive of 
poverty, if not of a very sparse population. But 
this, too, had greatly decreased in some places. In 
the time of Augustus, Thebes had ceased to be any¬ 
thing more than a large village—the same Thebes 
that had played so prominent a part in legend and 
history. With a few exceptions, the larger Boeotian 
147 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


towns were in the same sad plight. Cities without 
inhabitants, or only a few; cattle grazing in the de¬ 
serted streets, and even in the market-place, seem to 
have been a common sight. What had become of 
the inhabitants? We only know that they were gone, 
most of them, doubtless, to their graves. 

In Greece, Sparta excepted, slavery was of a rather 
mild type, and it was unusual for a Greek to sell a 
slave to a foreigner. Neither did gladiatorial com¬ 
bats flourish among the Greeks. Even Corinth, that 
in later times contained a large admixture of Romans, 
could not acclimate them. While it is true that the 
Greeks made light of human life and took it upon 
the slightest pretext, it was rarely done by the cruel 
methods of the Romans. With all their faults and 
frailties they belonged to a distinctly higher type of 
men, and their civilization at a very early period 
began to move along lines afterward followed by the 
progressive nations of the world. How infinitely 
better were their peaceful contests than the bloody 
spectacles that were the delight of Rome! 

Just as the Greeks were reluctant to admit foreign¬ 
ers to citizenship, they were also reluctant to admit 
exotic gods into their pantheon. In both, their policy 
was diametrically opposed to that of Rome. Their 
exclusiveness in the former regard was due to their 
belief in their own superiority; in the latter, to the 
conviction that their national gods were sufficient for 
all human needs. Friedlaender is probably right in 
his contention that the period here under considera- 
148 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


tion shows no decay in what we may call religion, 
either in Greece or Rome. Its external forms and 
traditional rites were sedulously kept up and scrupu¬ 
lously maintained. Plutarch likewise bears testi¬ 
mony to this condition of things. Scoffers and in¬ 
fidels had become more numerous, mainly because 
the Romans were more tolerant in such matters than 
the Greeks. To the ruling class all cults were alike; 
consequently they made no objections to anything 
that was spoken or written, so long as their authority 
was not directly or indirectly attacked. In the vari¬ 
ous controversies about religion mentioned in the 
New Testament, the attitude of the government is 
always one of indifference except as to the mainte¬ 
nance of public order. 

The Greeks, generally speaking, preferred, like 
Plutarch, the limited sphere of local political activity 
to the larger one offered at Rome. The provincials 
who came to honor on the other side of the Adriatic 
were few in number. 

In the main the provinces fared better under the 
imperial government than under the republic. There 
was a higher degree of probability that wrongs would 
be redressed. A case in point is that of the apostle 
Paul who appealed to Caesar even when the Caesar 
was Nero. 

It is a w T elbknown fact of ancient history that prop¬ 
erty in transit, either by land or sea, was at no time 
particularly safe at a distance from the centers of pop¬ 
ulation. The thief and the robber are familiar figures 
149 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


in both sacred and profane writings. Pompey’s ex¬ 
tensive crusade against the pirates that infested all 
parts of the Mediterranean forms an important 
episode in the records of the Roman navy. Even in 
the cities, the unlighted streets afforded frequent op¬ 
portunities for plunder and murder to those who had 
no scruples about taking life or property. As do¬ 
mestic affairs from time to time engrossed the atten¬ 
tion of the imperial administration, the outlying 
provinces were not carefully looked after; roads were 
neglected and became insecure; the police force 
lacked efficiency, and commercial intercourse between 
the different parts of the empire was reduced to a 
minimum. The people were driven to agriculture as 
their only means of support, which, in Greece partic¬ 
ularly, was never a profitable industry. Nothing 
affords a more striking contrast between the police 
system of ancient and modern times than the fre¬ 
quency with which robberies are mentioned in the 
former and their rarity in the other. Paul tells us 
that he had been in peril by robbers; we know, too, 
from the writings of Josephus and others that the 
conflicts between this class of outlaws and the Ro¬ 
man government were by no means infrequent. 
Those who had been engaged in rebellion, or who 
were among the vanquished in battle, or who had be¬ 
come voluntary or compulsory exiles, often felt that 
they had a right to prey on orderly society. 

It is a recognized fact that the monarchical system 
of the East tended to encourage immorality, a con- 

150 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


dition of things that usually exists where there is no 
strong and wholesome public opinion. The usurpers 
in the Greek cities, and later, the Roman provincial 
governors, were, with rare exceptions, men of loose 
morals if not worse. The private life of its repre¬ 
sentatives was a matter with which the home govern¬ 
ment did not concern itself, and the subjects were 
constrained to be dumb. Now and then one of these 
petty sovereigns ruled wisely according to the stand¬ 
ards of the time, and the public was satisfied, 
especially if they knew how to maintain brilliant 
courts, and to adorn their capitals with imposing 
structures. It was so easy to trump up the charge of 
sedition against persons who refused to be servile 
flatterers, that only the most courageous dared to 
stand aloof. Finlay, though somewhat given to paint¬ 
ing in strong colors, is probably not far wrong when 
he says: “It is difficult to imagine a society more 
completely destitute of moral restraint than that in 
which the Asiatic Greeks lived. Public opinion was 
powerless to enforce even an outward respect for 
virtue; military accomplishments, talents for civil ad¬ 
ministration, literary eminence and devotion to the 
power of an arbitrary sovereign, were the direct roads 
to distinction and wealth; honesty and virtue were 
very secondary qualities. In old countries or societies 
where a class becomes predominant, a conventional 
character is formed, according to the exigencies of 
the case, as the standard of an honorable man; and it 
is usually very different indeed from what is really 
151 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


necessary to constitute a virtuous or even an honest 
citizen.” 

The student of Greek history is often inclined to 
believe that the bane of Hellenic statesmanship was 
the bitter rivalry that always existed between the 
different polities. From the standpoint of the phi¬ 
losopher this view is correct. If the energies de¬ 
voted to the means and methods of mutual destruction 
had been expended on the arts of peace, not only 
Greece, but the entire world would, to-day, present a 
widely different aspect. However much the moralist 
may deplore the existing conditions, the man who 
takes the world as it is cannot fail to see that the ut¬ 
most strength of a nation is always put forth in war 
and for warlike purposes. It was so with the Greeks. 
Political rivalry was the strongest stimulus under 
which they acted. It was their life and growth, and 
to a large extent the measure of their prosperity. 
When political rivalries were extinguished by Alex¬ 
ander, and more effectually by the Romans, the spirit 
of Greece, too, died out. The Romans, especially 
in their first contact with Greece, were too much 
barbarians to have any sympathy with the best that 
Greece had to offer. A genius for government is not 
necessarily a mark of advanced civilization. It is 
true there were at all times men among the Romans 
able to appreciate the proud preeminence of the 
Greeks in arts and letters, but their numbers were too 
few to make any general impression. The leading 
families, including most of the emperors, were fa- 

152 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 

miliar with the Greek language and used it with ease; 
but there were few Romans who did not despise the 
Greeks and regard them as inferiors. Nations, like 
individuals, feel more or less contempt for those whose 
tastes are different from their own; and in the case 
before us, the Greeks being the weaker, were the chief 
sufferers. But just as rich men sometimes buy books 
and statuary of which they do not know the value, 
and collect libraries which they cannot read, because 
intelligent people take pleasure in these things, so a 
certain class of Romans affected a fondness for Greek 
art and literature and philosophy. An enormous 
quantity of works of Greek art was transported across 
the Adriatic by the Romans with small advantage to 
the pillagers or to the nation. Notwithstanding the 
predilection of some of the leading families for Greek 
culture, their influence made no deep and lasting 
impression on Roman thought, in the better sense. 
Rome always showed itself much more receptive 
toward what is debasing than for what was ennobling. 

After this hasty survey of the condition of Plu¬ 
tarch’s countrymen we are more than ever inclined 
to be surprised at his optimism. Yet the explana¬ 
tion is not far to seek, and is consistent with his 
philosophy. He had an abiding faith in a divine 
Providence who orders all things for the best. He 
holds that men are free and therefore responsible. 
The ills that afflict them are chiefly of their own 
making; why then should a wise man grieve over 
them? It is man’s chief business to free himself 
153 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


from unholy desires; to control the volcanic and per¬ 
turbing impulses of his nature by means of philoso¬ 
phy, which when rightly apprehended is divine. As 
man is in the last analysis an ethical being, the fun¬ 
damental problem of philosophy how to carry out 
in practice those ethical principles in the observance 
of which man only can be truly happy. If, then, 
men’s misfortunes are the natural consequence and 
result of their own perverseness, there is no reason 
why we should grieve over them. So far as political 
conditions are concerned, he doubtless felt that the 
rule of the Roman emperors had at last given peace 
to his long distracted country, on as favorable terms 
as could be expected. 

It has been said of Plutarch that there is not a 
new thought in all his writings,—and this by way of 
disparagement. The charge is probably true. The 
men who have put new ideas into the world are few 
indeed. The world is far less in need of instruction 
than of reminding. Besides, there is no reason why 
an artist should not deal with a familiar subject in 
his own way. If he can tell an old story so as to 
give it a new interest, or treat a welbworn theme so 
as to make it seem fresh, he is not the least among 
his brethren. It is especially writers upon ethics 
that are apt to be tedious. The more honor to him 
who can make his preaching attractive and interesting. 

Perhaps the chief charm of Plutarch’s writings is the 
assumption on his part that he is a reasonable man 
himself and is talking to reasonable men; for as we 

154 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


have already seen, he has always hearers in mind 
rather than readers. We can imagine him ever and 
anon saying, You either know what is right, what 
your duty is, or you want to know. The rules of con¬ 
duct are plain and simple; you have but to obey 
them and you will be happy. Perform the duties 
incumbent upon you, to the gods, to your fellow citi¬ 
zens, to the members of your family, to yourself, and 
you will be content with the present order of things, 
and your fellow men with you. If you want to lead 
a moral life, be humane, be truthful, be sympathetic, 
be chaste, deal honestly with your fellow men, follow 
your rational nature rather than your emotions, and 
you will have no reason to regret that you have 
lived; your fellow men will be glad that you have for 
a time sojourned among them, and have left behind 
you the light of your example to shine for those who 
come after you. 

Lecky in his History of European Morals, already 
cited, has some interesting passages on the relation of 
Seneca and Plutarch to certain phases of the thought 
of their time, a few of which may properly find a 
place here. He says: “A class of writers began to 
arise, who, like the Stoics, believed virtue rather than 
enjoyment, to be the supreme good, and who acknowl¬ 
edged that virtue consisted solely of the control 
which the enlightened will exercises over the desires, 
but who at the same time gave free scope to the be¬ 
nevolent affections, and a more religious and mystical 
tone to the whole scheme of morals.” 

155 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


“ Plutarch, whose fame as a biographer has, I think, 
unduly eclipsed his reputation as a moralist, may be 
justly regarded as the leader of this movement, and 
his moral writings may be profitably compared with 
those of Seneca, the most ample exponent of the sterner 
school. Seneca is not unfrequently self-conscious, 
theatrical, and over-strained. His precepts have 
something of the affected ring of a popular preacher. 
The imperfect fusion of his short sentences gives his 
style a disjointed and, so to speak, granulated charac¬ 
ter, which the emperor Caligula happily expressed 
when he compared it to sand without cement; yet he 
often rises to a majesty of eloquence, a grandeur 
both of thought and expression, that few moralists 
have ever rivaled. Plutarch, though far less sublime, 
is more sustained, equable and uniformly pleasing. 
The Montaigne of antiquity, his genius coruscates 
playfully and gracefully around his subject; he de¬ 
lights in illustrations which are often singularly 
vivid and original, but which by their excessive mul¬ 
tiplication appear sometimes rather the texture than 
the ornament of his discourse. A gentle, tender spirit, 
and a judgment equally free from paradox, exagger¬ 
ation, and excessive subtilty, are characteristics of all 
he wrote. Plutarch excels most in collecting mo¬ 
tives of consolation; Seneca in forming characters that 
need no consolation. There is something of the wo¬ 
man in Plutarch; Seneca is all man.* The writings 

* “ When Plutarch, after the death of his daughter; was writ¬ 
ing a letter of consolation to his wife, we find him turning away 
156 



Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


of the first resemble the strains of ths flute, to which 
the ancients attributed the power of calming the 
possessions and chasing away the clouds of sorrow, 
and drawing men by gentle suasion into the paths of 
virtue; the writings of the other are like the trumpet 
blast which kindles the soul with heroic courage. The 
first is more fitted to console a mother sorrowing 
over her dead child; the second to nerve a brave 
man, without flinching and without illusion, to 
grapple with an inevitable fate. The elaborate letters 
which Seneca has left us on distinctive tenets of the 
Stoical school, such as the equality of the vices, or 
the evil of the affections, have now little more than 
an historic interest; but the general tone of his 
writings gives them a permanent importance, for they 
reflect and foster a certain type of excellence which, 
since the extinction of Stoicism, has had no ad¬ 
equate expression in literature. The prevailing 
moral tone of Plutarch, on the other hand, being 
formed mainly on the prominence of the amiable 
virtues has been eclipsed or transcended by the 
Christian writers, but his definite contribution to 
philosophy and morals are more important than 
those of Seneca. He has left us one of the best 


from all the commonplaces of the stoics as the recollection of 
one simple trait of his little child rushed upon his mind:—‘ She 
desired her nurse to press even her dolls to her breast. She was 
so loving that she wished everything that gave her pleasure to 
share in the best she had.” ’ The statement that Seneca is all 
man will be questioned by those who know that two of his Let 
ters of Condolence are addressed to women. These are almost 
the only writings in Roman literature so addressed. 



Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


works on Superstition, and one of the most ingenious 
on Providence, we possess. He was probably the first 
writer who advocated very strongly humanity to ani¬ 
mals on the broad ground of universal benevolence, 
as distinguished from the Pythagorean doctrine of 
transmigration, as he was also remarkable, beyond all 
his contemporaries for his high sense of female ex¬ 
cellence, and of the sanctity of female love.” 

Seneca, Plutarch, and the Apostle Paul were in a 
sense contemporaries. All three did what they could 
to make the world better in their time and after them. 
All three were preachers of righteousness, each in his 
way. All three wrote much that has engaged the 
attention of the world, and stimulated its thought. 
But how great the contrast between the projects of 
these men, especially the two last! Plutarch was 
wholly lacking in Paul’s devotion to an idea. He 
would have scouted the suggestion that a man should 
give up friends, social position, country, kindred, 
everything, to go forth to preach a new doctrine. 
How widely apart, how almost diametically opposite 
the methods of two men who are in a sense seeking 
the same end! The thoughts of the philosopher, his 
intellectual vision, was turned toward the setting sun. 
At most he could only hope, as we now see, to pro¬ 
long the dim twilight that still hovered over the earth. 
The world had well-nigh lost faith in the power of 
human reason to regenerate mankind. The spiritual 
eyes of the Christian were on the rising sun. Though 
he saw that it was as yet shining but dimly, he had 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


no doubt that in time it would rise to noonday splen¬ 
dor. The pillar of fire that led and lighted the way for 
the saint; the beatific vision that always stood before 
his enraptured gaze; the workbembracing panorama 
that kept growing larger and larger as the little 
Christian colonies were planted one after another in 
Asia Minor, in Greece, in Rome, had no existence 
for the philosopher. He has, it is true, a belief in an 
overruling Providence, but it lacks clearness, because 
weakened by a polytheistic creed, or at least by the 
remnants of such a creed. To it he still tenaciously 
clings, though it may be half unconsciously. He too 
had a belief in an existence after death; but it was 
not of the sort that made him feel that all the tribu¬ 
lations of this world wdiich were but for a moment 
were not to be compared with the glory that should 
follow. 

If we would personify Christianity and Philosophy 
as they met each other at the close of the first century 
of our era, we may designate the one as the young 
man, who, though poor in this world’s goods, is strong 
in hope, in faith, in himself and in his cause. His 
superb physique, his capital digestion, make him 
ready for any enterprise, any sacrifice that shall 
promise success. Any field in which he may display 
his splendid energies is welcome to him, for he lives 
not in the past, but in the future. The other is the 
old man who has, in the main, lived a useful and 
honorable life, who has performed some noble deeds, 
and whose chief anxiety is to give the rising genera- 
159 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


tion the benefit of the wisdom that has come to him 
in a life of study and observation. But, as is usually 
the case with the aged, his advice has become com¬ 
monplace and the rising generation passes him by 
almost unheeded. Few have now any confidence in 
his teachings, while many of his former disciples 
have deserted him. It is his sad fate, to see himself 
jostled at first and finally thrust aside by the passing 
stream of humanity. 

The principal works used in the study of Plutarch 
here placed before the reader are the following: 

Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia. Edidit Daniel Wyttenbach. 
8 voll. Oxonii, 1795-1821. 

R. Volkmann. Leben und Schriften des Plutarch von Chaeronea. 
Berlin , 1869. 

O. Or bard. De la Morale de Plutarque. Cinquieme edition. Paris. 
1892. 

Plutarch's Werke iibersetzt von Klaiber, Bdhr, u. A. Stuttgart , 
1837-57. 

Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia. Recognovit Gregorius N. Bernar- 
dakis. Lipsiae, 1888-96. 7 voll. 

The last named contains a revised text only; 
from it my translation of the De Sera was made. 
The German translation of Bahr, the welbknown 
Heidelberg professor, in the collection above cited, 
follows the original very closely and has been of 
much service to me by its interpretation of obscure 
passages. 

A complete catalogue of Plutarch’s Moralia is given 
in the appendix. The list is borrowed from the 
edition of Bernardakis and the question of authen¬ 
ticity is not taken into account. 

160 


Plutarch and the Greece of His Age 


Note: —To translate Plutarch is a very different task from 
that of translating Seneca. The style of the latter is terse and 
epigrammatic; clauses and sentences often follow each other 
without connectives, and are in the main short. That of the 
former is the reverse. Most of his sentences are long, many 
of them very long. These, as well as clauses and words, are 
often strung together with the participles xal and yap, 
or other connectives, until the reader sometimes wonders 
whether they will ever end. Seneca is full of pithy sayings 
well suited for quotation; in Plutarch they are rare. The 
style of both writers is highly rhetorical, but, if we except 
the evident striving after effect, they have little else in com¬ 
mon. 

As in the case of Seneca, it has been my aim to preserve for 
the English reader the peculiarities of the Greek, so far as 
possible. There is much to be said in favor of making a 
translation, above everything else, readable; but in the effort 
to do so, the translator is constantly exposed to the danger of 
displacing the style of the original with his own. I hope I 
have in a measure, at least, succeeded in putting before the 
English reader, not only what Plutarch said in the following 
Tract, but also how he said it. 


161 


“ Because sentence against an evil work is not executed 
speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in 
them to do evil.” 

CONCERNING THE DELAY OF THE DEITY IN 
PUNISHING THE WICKED. 

DRAMATIS PERSONAE. 

Plutarch. Patrocleas, his son-in=law. Timon, his brother. 

Olympichus. 

The scene is the portico of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. 
The tract is dedicated to a certain Quintus, whose name seems 
to indicate that he was a Roman, but of whom nothing defi¬ 
nite is known. 

When Epicurus had thus spoken, O Quintus, and 
before any one had replied, he went hurriedly away, 
as we were now at the end of the porch. We stood for 
some time in speechless wonder at the strange con¬ 
duct of the man and looking at one another, then 
turned back to resume our walk. Thereupon Patro¬ 
cleas first broke the silence: “Pray, what shall we 
do?” said he, “ Shall we drop the inquiry, or shall 
we answer the arguments of the speaker who is not 
present as if he were?” “ It would not be fitting to 
leave the dart he discharged, as he departed, sticking 
in the wound. Brasidas, as we are told, drew the 
shaft from his body, and with the same weapon slew 
the man who had hit him. It is not worth our while, 

162 





The Delay of the Deity 


of course, to defend ourselves against all those who 
assail us with ilbgrounded or fallacious arguments, 
but it will suffice us if we cast them from us before 
they become firmly fixed in our minds.” “ What was 
there then,” said I, “ in what he said that most 
impressed you? For many things and without any 
order, one here, another there, the man kept charging 
against Providence, with anger and vituperation at 
the same time.” 

2. Hereupon Patrocleas said: “ The tardiness and 
delay of the Deity in punishing the wicked seems to 
me a matter of special importance; and now, by the 
arguments that have been advanced, I have been led 
anew and, as it were, a stranger, to the question; but 
long ago I was offended when I read in Euripides, 

‘ He procrastinates, and this is the manner of the 
Deity.’ Yet God ought, least of all things, to be slack 
towards the wicked, as they are neither slack nor dila¬ 
tory about doing evil, but are impelled by their unre¬ 
strained passions to acts of injustice. And in truth, 
the retribution, which Thucydides says follows close 
upon the commission of a crime, forthwith bars the 
way for those who usually prosper in succesful vil¬ 
lainy. For there is no debt like overdue justice that 
makes him who has been wronged so faint= hearted 
and discouraged, while it emboldens the wicked man 
in his audacity and violence; but the punishments that 
follow close upon the commission of crimes are re¬ 
straints upon those who are meditating wrongs 
against others, and there is the greatest consolation 
163 


The Delay of the Deity 


in this for those who have suffered injustice. So, then, 
the remark of Bias often troubles me when I reflect 
upon it; for he said, according to report, to a certain 
reprobate, that he did not fear lest he might not suf¬ 
fer the punishment of his misdeeds, but only that he 
might not himself (Bias) live to see it. What profit 
was it to the Messenians, who were long since dead, 
that Aristokrates was punished for betraying them at 
the battle of Taphros, when the matter remained un¬ 
discovered for more than twenty years, during which 
time he had been king of the Arcadians, though he 
was finally detected and punished, when they were no 
longer alive? Or what consolation was it to the 
Orchomenians who had lost children and friends and 
kinsmen through the treason of Lykiscus, that he 
was seized a long time afterwards by a disease which 
gradually ate up his body?—this man who was always 
dipping his feet into the river to wet them and calling 
down a curse upon himself, praying that he might rot 
if he had betrayed and wronged them. And the cast¬ 
ing forth of the bodies of the accursed from Athens 
and their transportation beyond the boundaries was 
an act that not even the children of those who had 
been slain were permitted to behold. Wherefore, 
Euripides inappropiately uses these lines to deter 
men from the commission of crime, ‘ Fear not lest 
injustice overtake thee and smite thee down, unjust 
man; but in silence and with slow step it will over¬ 
take the wicked when the time is ripe.’ For verily, 
no other consideration but just such as these, the bad 
164 


The Delay of the Deity 

will naturally use to encourage themselves and take 
as pledges of security in villainy, on the ground that 
wrong-doing brings forth early and evident fruit, 
while the penalty comes late, and long after the satis¬ 
faction (that arises from success in crime).” 

3. When Patrocleas had concluded his remarks, 
Olympichus spoke up and said, “ To what great ab¬ 
surdities do the delays and postponements of the Deity 
in such matters lead! Because this tardiness destroys 
faith in Providence, and the fact that retribution does 
not closely follow each particular act of wrong-doing 
but is later, thus making room for chance, men, by 
calling it a misfortune, not a penalty, are they in any 
wise bettered? Even though they may be grieved at 
what has befallen them, do they feel regret at what 
they have done? For just as the immediate stroke 
of the whip or the spur laid quickly to the horse that 
makes a false step or stumbles brings it to a sense of 
duty, but all the subsequent jerking and tugging at 
the reins and shouting seem rather to be done for 
some other reason than correction, because they 
produce pain but not betterment; so vice, if lashed 
and beaten for each act of villainy committed, would 
speedily become repentant and humble and fearful of 
God who beholds men’s acts and sufferings, if He did 
not postpone justice. And justice that according to 
Euripides procrastinates and with slow pace overtakes 
the wicked, seems more like an affair of chance than 
of Providence, because there is about it so much un¬ 
certainty, delay and lack of system. The result is 
165 


The Delay of the Deity 

that I do not see what use there is in the saying that 
the mills of the gods grind late, both because they ob¬ 
scure justice and take away the fear of evibdoing.” 

4. Thereupon in reply to these remarks and while 
I was still absorbed in reflection, Timon said: ‘' Shall 
I now add to the discussion the climax of my own 
perplexity or shall I pass it over until after the dis¬ 
posal of the main argument?” “What is the use,” 
said I, “ of sending along a third wave to wash away 
the subjecbmatter, if it be found impossible to re¬ 
fute and invalidate the first objection? First, then, 
beginning, as we say, at the ingle^side and with the 
caution of the philosophers of the Academy in regard 
to the divinity, let us beware of assuming that we 
know just what to say on this subject. In truth, an 
affair of more serious moment is the consideration of 
supernal and divine things, for us who are human be¬ 
ings, than when one who has no ear for music dis¬ 
cusses this art, or when one who has never served in 
the army discourses on military affairs; because, 
though ignorant of the plan of the artificer, we as¬ 
sume to be able to fathom his designs from what we 
suppose to be probable and fitting. It is not hard for 
one unacquainted with the healing art to comprehend 
the reasoning of a physician as to why he did not 
sooner perform a certain amputation rather than later, 
or why he ordered a bath yesterday and not to=day; 
in respect to God, on the other hand, it is not easy for 
a mortal to say any thing positive except that, know¬ 
ing best the proper occasion for curing a man of hia 
166 


The Delay of the Deity 

vices, He administers to each person chastisements 
as medicaments, but not equally severe in all cases 
nor at one and the same time. For that the healing 
art when applied to the soul is called right and right¬ 
eousness and is the greatest of all arts, Pindar in addi¬ 
tion to thousands of others, affirms, when he calls God 
the ruler and custodian of the whole universe, the 
‘ master builder,’ for the reason that He is the guard¬ 
ian of justice according to which it shall be de¬ 
termined when and how and to what degree every 
wicked man is to be punished. And of this art Plato 
says that Minos the son of Jove was a student, as it 
is not possible to properly dispense justice, or to 
recognize what is just unless one has learned and 
acquired a knowledge of the same. Not even the 
laws that men enact have always their clear and 
plain justification and some enactments even seem at 
first sight ridiculous. For instance, in Lacedaemon, 
the ephors, immediately upon taking office, issue an 
edict that no one is to wear a mustache and that 
the laws are to be obeyed in order that none may feel 
their severity. The Romans inflict a slight blow 
with a twig upon those whom they intend to emanci¬ 
pate; and when they make a will they bequeath their 
property to some persons as their heirs, but sell it to 
others,—which seems to be absurd. But most absurd one 
would think the law of Solon to be to the effect that 
he shall be deprived of civil rights, who, when there 
are parties and factions in the state, take sides with 
neither. In short, one could name many anomalies 
167 


The Delay of the Deity 


in law, if he did not know the intentions of the law¬ 
maker, and did not understand the reason for every 
single part of the decrees that have been issued. 
What wonder is it then, if, when it is so hard to see 
through human purposes, that it is not easy to say 
with respect to the gods for what reason they punish 
some transgressors later, others sooner. 

5. These things are no excuse for shunning an in¬ 
vestigation, but a plea for indulgence, so that the 
discussion, looking as it were, toward a harbor and 
port of refuge, may move forward with the greater 
confidence, in the midst of perplexities. Then con¬ 
sider first this fact, that according to Plato, Grod 
having placed Himself in the midst of all that is en- 
chantingly fair, as a sort of model, gives to human 
worth, which is in some measure an image of Him¬ 
self, an exemplar which all are to follow so far as 
they are able. For the universe, being in its natural 
state devoid of order, began to change and to be 
transformed into a cosmos when it participated in, 
and became assimilated to, the divine idea and virtue. 
This same man also says that nature kindles in 
us the germ of vision so that by beholding the 
heavenly bodies borne along in their courseo, and by 
admiration of the same, the soul becomes habitu¬ 
ated to take pleasure in and to love what is orderly 
and systematically arranged, but that it hates all dis¬ 
orderly and uncontrolled passion, and shuns the 
purposeless and hibor^miss as being the origin of all 
vice and discord. It is impossible for man, by his very 
168 


The Delay of the Deity 


nature, to have a completer enjoyment of God than 
when seeking and earnestly striving after virtue by 
imitating everything that is good and noble. For 
this reason also God punishes the wicked in due time 
and with deliberation; not because He is Himself 
afraid of making a mistake by chastising any one too 
soon or because He might repent of it, but in order 
to remove from us what is brutal and hasty in the in¬ 
fliction of punishment, and to teach us not to chastise 
in anger nor when greatly excited and indignant, 
* rage o’erleaps the bounds of reason ’; as if, in order 
to satisfy our hunger or quench our thirst we 
rushed upon those who have done us an injury, but 
imitating His goodness and long-suffering and taking 
time as our adviser, that gives least room for repen¬ 
tance, we should proceed to inflict punishments in 
accordance with justice. For, as Socrates said, it is 
less mischievous to drink murky water, heedlessly, 
than when one is in a perturbed state of mind and 
under the influence of anger and has lost the power 
of self-control before the mind has become calm 
and clear, to vent one’s wrath on the person of a 
kinsman or friend. For vengeance does not belong 
close upon the inquiry, as Thucydides says, but is 
most in place when as far from it as possible. Since 
anger, according to Melanthius ‘commits terrible 
deeds when it has displaced self-control’; so, like¬ 
wise, reason does what is just and fitting when it has 
put aside anger and excitement. Further also, men 
are made humane by the example of others when 


The Delay of the Deity 


they learn, for instance, that Plato, after raising his 
staff to strike his slave, remained standing for a long 
time, as he himself says, in this way chastening his 
anger. And Archytas, on learning that his servants 
were negligent and disorderly in his fields, but 
noticing that he was greatly angered and incensed 
at them, did nothing but remark as he walked away, 
‘You are lucky that I am very wroth at you.’ If, 
therefore, the reported sayings of men, treasured up 
for us, deter us from harshness and the violence 
resulting from passion; much more does it become us, 
as we look upon God who lacks nothing and who 
knows no repentance for any deed, yet postpones 
punishment to the future and bides His time, to be 
on our guard in such matters. We ought also to 
look upon mildness and long-suffering as the divine 
part of the virtue which God Himself exemplifies 
(in His dealings with men), and to remember that 
few are made better by swift chastisement, but that 
many are profited and admonished by tardiness in 
punishing. 

6. In the second place, let us remember that 
punishments among men, having regard solely to the 
infliction of injuries to others, cease with the 
malefactor and go no further; therefore, like a 
barking dog they (the penalties) cling to the heels 
of the transgression and follow up actions closely. 
But God, as seems reasonable, discerns the pas¬ 
sions of the diseased soul upon which He wishes to 
visit punishment, whether in any way, perchance, it 
170 


The Delay of the Deity 


may turn to repentance, and He gives time for amend¬ 
ment to those whose vices are not ineradicable and 
incurable. For, knowing (as He does) what portion 
of virtue souls going forth from Him to be born, 
carry with them, and how strong and ineffaceable is 
the nobleness implanted in them, and that virtue 
yields to vice contrary to its nature because corrupted 
by food and evil communications, and that some, after 
undergoing a cure, again resume their former nature, 
He does not inflict upon all a penalty equally severe. 
But him who is incorrigible He removes forthwith 
from life and cuts off, because constant association 
with wickedness is very harmful to others, and in the 
highest degree harmful to the soul itself. On the 
contrary, to those who from ignorance of the good 
rather than from a predilection for evil and to whom 
it is only second nature to go astray, He gives time 
for repentance. But if they remain obdurate He vis¬ 
its these also with punishment, for, of course, He has 
no fear lest they may escape Him. Consider also 
what transformations have taken place in the char¬ 
acter of men and in their life; for which reason also 
this change and character (?0o?) is called a turning 
(r/?o7ro?) as habit (£0o?) for the most part shapes it 
and by laying hold of it controls it. I think, there¬ 
fore, that the ancients represented Kecrops dual in 
form (a combination of man and dragon), not as 
some say, because, after he had been an excellent 
king he became a cruel and ruthless tyrant, but for 
the opposite reason, namely, that after having been 
171 


The Delay of the Deity 

unjust and merciless he turned out to be gentle and 
kindly, when he had got into power. If this is not 
certain, we know, at least, that Gelo and Hiero, both 
Sicilians, and Peisistratus the son of Hippokrates, 
all men who had put themselves at the head of af¬ 
fairs by base methods, used their power for the fur¬ 
therance of virtuous ends; and though they had at¬ 
tained power illegally, they nevertheless became just 
and popular rulers. They promoted good order and 
the cultivation of the soil; made temperate and in¬ 
dustrious citizens out of men who had been gossipers 
and idlers; and Gelo, after fighting bravely and de¬ 
feating the Carthaginians in a great battle, would not 
make the peace with them which they sued for until 
they had pledged themselves to cease from sacrificing 
their children to Kronos. In Megalopolis, Lydia- 
des was a usurper; but when at the height of his 
power a change came over him and, having conceived 
a loathing for iniquity, he gave a constitution to the 
citizens, then in a battle with the enemies of his 
country met a glorious death. If some one had slain 
the ursurper Miltiades in the Chersonesus, or had 
prosecuted Kimon for incest with his sister, or had 
driven Themistocles from the city by an indictment, 
when he was indulging in drunken revelries and in¬ 
sulting people in the market place, as was afterwards 
done with Alkibiades, would we not have lost the 
heroes of Marathon, of the Eurymedon and fair 
Artemisium, ‘where the sons of the Athenians laid the 
glorious corner-stone of liberty?’ Men cast in a large 

172 


The Delay of the Deity 

mold neither do anything in a small way, nor do the 
vehemence and energy of their titanic natures suffer 
them to be inactive; but they are tossed to and fro 
like a ship on the waves until they settle down into a 
fixed and well-grounded character. Just as a person 
who was ignorant of agriculture would not take a 
fancy to land, if he saw it overgrown with weeds and 
brambles, full of wild animals, running water and 
marshes; while to one who has learned to discriminate 
and to judge, these very things show the strength and 
goodness of the soil; so men cast in a large mold com¬ 
mit irregularities and follies—men whose volcanic 
and vehement natures we cannot endure, and think 
they ought to be cut off or kept in check. But the 
better judge, he who in spite of these things discerns 
innate worth and nobility, waits until age and matur¬ 
ity become the co-workers of reason and virtue, when 
nature shall bring forth her proper fruit.” 

7. “ So much, then, on this point. And do you 

not think certain of the Greeks have done wisely in 
adopting the Egyptian law that forbids the execution 
of a woman condemned to death during pregnancy, 
until after her delivery?” “Most assuredly,” they 
said. “ If then,” said I, “ a person is big, not w T ith a 
child, but w r ith a deed or a secret project which he 
may in the course of time bring into the w r orld and 
put into execution, or if he might disclose some 
hidden crime, or be the author of some judicious 
counsel or the discoverer of some useful invention, 
would it not be better to await a seasonable time for 
173 


The Delay of the Deity 


removing him (than to do it prematurely)? To me 
at least it seems so,” I said. “ And to us also,” re¬ 
plied Patrocleas. “ Very good,” said I. “ Now con¬ 
sider that if Dionysius had been punished at the be¬ 
ginning of his usurped power, no Greek would have 
settled in Sicily, though it had been laid waste by 
the Carthaginians; nor would Greeks have settled in 
Apollonia or in Anaktorium or in the peninsula of 
Leukadia, if Periander had not received his punish¬ 
ment a long time after (his accession to power). 
And I believe also that the day of reckoning for 
Kasander was postponed in order that Thebes might 
be rebuilt. Of the mercenaries that had assisted in 
plundering the temple here the greater part accom¬ 
panied Timoleon on an expedition to Sicily where 
they conquered the Carthaginians and overthrew the 
tyrants; then the miserable wretches died a miserable 
death. There is no doubt that the Deity sometimes 
employs certain men after the manner of public exe¬ 
cutioners, to be the avengers of other villains, then 
destroys them as I think He does most tyrants. For 
just as the gall of the hyena and the beestings (or 
rennet) of the seal and other parts of repulsive animals 
have a property that is useful for the cure of diseases, 
so God inflicts on some persons who need a drastic 
remedy and chastisement, a stern and hard tyrant; 
nor does He release them from their grievous and 
melancholy state until He has cured their disease and 
purified them. Such a medicine was Phalaris to the 
Akragantines, and to the Romans, Marius. To the 

174 


The Delay of the Deity 

Sikyonians also the god declared explicitly that their 
city needed a scourge for taking away from the 
Kleonians the boy Teletias, crowned in the Pythian 
games, as their own fellow-citizen, and putting him 
to death. So, sure enough, when Orthagoras had be¬ 
come tyrant of Sikyon, and after him Myron and 
Kleisthenes, he and his successors made an end of 
their lasciviousness; the Kleonians, however, not re¬ 
ceiving such curative treatment, sank into insignifi¬ 
cance. You know that Homer somewhere says, ‘From 
him, a far baser father, was born a son better in all 
manner of excellence’; yet that son of Kopreus per¬ 
formed no brilliant or even noteworthy exploit. But 
the descendants of Sisyphus and of Autolycus and 
of Phlegyas were conspicuous for the deeds and vir¬ 
tues of great kings. Pericles of Athens, also sprang 
from a house on which rested a curse; while in Rome, 
Pompey the Great was the son of Strabo whose 
corpse the Roman people, in their hatred, cast out 
and trampled under foot. Why should it then be 
thought strange, if, just as the husbandman does not 
dig up the thorns lest he destroy the asparagus, and 
the Lydians do not burn the shrub until they have 
gathered the gum from it; so God should in like man¬ 
ner delay to extirpate the evil and corrupt root of an 
illustrious and kingly house until the proper fruit has 
grown from it? It was better for the Phokians to 
lose the countless herds of kine and horses belonging 
to Iphitus, as also that much gold and silver should 
be taken from Delphi, than not to have had Ulysses 
175 


The Delay of the Deity 

or Asklepias born among them, or the other distin¬ 
guished and noble-minded men whose ancestors had 
been evibdoers and reprobates. 

8. Do you not think it better that retribution 
should come in due season and in a fitting way, than 
immediately and all at once? As, for instance, in 
the case of Kalippus, who, supposed to be the friend 
of Dion, killed him with the same sword with which 
he was afterward dispatched by his friends; and that 
of Mitias the Argive who had been slain in a tumult 
and whose brazen statue in the marketplace fell on 
the slayer of Mitias during a dramatic performance 
and killed him. And the stories of Bessus, the 
Paeonian, and of Aristo the Oetaean, the leaders of 
the mercenaries, you, of course, know, Patrocleas.” 
“ I do not,” said he, “ but I would like to hear them.” 
“ Aristo,” I said, “ having taken away the ornaments 
of Eriphyle lying here (in this temple), with the 
permission of the authorities, presented them to his 
wife; but his son, angered at his mother from some 
cause, set the house on fire and burned up all who 
were in it. And Bessus, as the story goes, having 
killed his own father, was not found out for a long 
time, but finally, going to a banquet with some 
friends and happening to strike a nest of young 
swallows with his spear, knocked it down and killed 
the fledglings. When those who were present said, 
as was natural, * Man, what possessed you to do such 
an ill-omened deed’? he replied, ‘Have they not this 
long time been falsely accusing me and crying out 
176 


The Delay of the Deity 

against me for killing my father’? The astonished 
company reported the remark to the king, and after 
the case had been investigated Bessus received his 
just deserts.” 

9. “ We say these things,” I continued, “on the 

assumption that there is a postponement of punish¬ 
ment for the wicked; on the other hand, it is proper 
to hear what Hesiod says, who does not think with 
Plato that punishment is a pain which follows injus¬ 
tice, but that it is something of equal age with it; that 
it springs from the same root and place, for he says, 

‘ Evil counsel is most hurtful to him who has given 
it,’ and, 

‘ He who lays plots for another, lays a plot against 
himself.’ 

The cantharis, you know, is said to contain within 
itself the antidote (for the pain it inflicts), and vil¬ 
lainy, by .engendering within itself both pain and 
punishment, pays the penalty for evibdoing, not at a 
subsequent time, but in the outrage itself. Every 
malefactor who is punished by the infliction of pain 
on his body bears his own cross, and vice wreaks upon 
itself, out of itself, its own vengeance, because it is in 
a sense a creator of the woes of life that it brings into 
existence, together with the accompanying disgrace, 
many sorrows, fears and violent passions and regrets 
and unceasing restlessness. Some people are in no 
wise different from children, who, on seeing male¬ 
factors in the theaters often clad in gilded and purple 
garments, crowned and dancing about, are delighted 
177 


The Delay of the Deity 


and admire them as fortunate mortals, until they are 
seen goaded and scourged, while the fire breaks forth 
from their splendid and costly attire. For many of 
the wicked are the owners of fine mansions, and, as 
they hold magistracies and other responsible posi¬ 
tions, no one is aware that they are undergoing pun¬ 
ishment until they are put to death or hurled from 
rocks. This, one ought not to call punishment, but 
the consummation and fulfilment of punishment. 
For as Herodicus of Selymbria, who had been at¬ 
tacked by consumption, an incurable disease, was the 
first to combine gymnastics with the healing art, and 
of whom Plato says, that (in so doing) he protracted 
his own death, and that of all who were similarly 
diseased; so malefactors who are seen to have escaped 
immediate punishment, expiate their crimes by a 
longer, not by a shorter penalty; nor after a longer 
time but during a longer time; they are not punished 
after they have grown old, but they grow old during 
their punishment. And I say a long time with refer¬ 
ence to ourselves, for to the gods the span of human 
life is nothing,—now, but not thirty years ago is the 
same as to say, that in the evening, but not in the 
morning, the malefactor, is to be tortured or hanged, 
especially since man is shut up in this life just as in 
a prison from which there is no migration to another 
place or escape, but which in the meanwhile allows 
time for many enjoyments and the transaction of 
business, the bestowing and receiving of honors and 
favors, and for diversions; just as persons in prison 
178 


The Delay of the Deity 

are allowed to play at dice or draughts, though the 
noose is all the while dangling above their heads. 

10. Moreover, what reason is there for saying 
that those who lie in prison under sentence of death 
do not receive their punishment until they are de¬ 
capitated? or that he who has drunk the hemlock^ 
juice, but is still walking about waiting for the heavi¬ 
ness to get into his legs, until he is seized by anaes¬ 
thesia and the rigor of death, (has not received his?) 
If we regard the consummation of the punishment as 
the punishment itself, we overlook the intervening 
sufferings and fears, as well as the apprehension and 
regret with which every evil-doer is harassed. Is not 
this just as if we were to say of the fish that has swal¬ 
lowed the hook, that it is not caught until we see it 
broiled or cut up by the cooks? Every one who has 
committed a crime is firmly held by justice and has 
then and there fastened within himself, like a bait 
the sweet morsel of iniquity. Having an avenging 
conscience in his breast, ‘ Like a frantic tunny he 
spins round in the sea.’ For the well-known reckless 
audacity and overconfidence of vice is active and 
ardent until the evil deed has been done; then the 
passion subsiding like a wind, sinks down weak and 
cowed under the weight of fears and superstitions; so 
that it is entirely in accordance with the event and 
the truth that Stesichorus attributes a dream to 
Klytemnestra in about these words: ‘ She thought a 
dragon with gory head approached her, and from it 
Pleisthenades came forth.’ For visions by night and 
179 


The Delay of the Deity 


apparitions by day and oracles and celestial portents 
and whatever other phenomenon is regarded as 
caused by the direct interposition of God, cause 
anxieties and fears to persons who have a guilty 
conscience. For example, it is said, that Apollodorus 
once in a dream saw himself flayed by the Scythians, 
then boiled, and heard his heart speaking from the 
caldron and saying, ‘ I am the cause of all this’; and 
that at another time he saw his daughters all ablaze, 
their bodies encircled with flame, running about him. 
Hipparchus also, the son of Peisistratus, a little 
before his death saw Aphrodite flinging blood in his 
face from a kind of basin; and the favorites of 
Ptolemy the Thunderer, saw him summoned before a 
tribunal by Seleucus where vultures and wolves were 
the judges, distributing many pieces of flesh among 
his enemies. Pausanias, likewise, having caused a 
free maiden to be brought by force from Byzantium 
in order to pass the night with her, but when she was 
come, owing to some perturbation of mind and 
suspicion, had her put to death—this maiden he fre¬ 
quently saw in a dream calling to him, ‘ Hasten to 
judgment; assuredly lust brings sorrow on men.’ As 
the apparition did not cease to haunt him, it is said 
that he set sail for the oracle of the dead at Heracleia 
where he called up the ghost of the damsel by ex¬ 
piatory rites and libations. Appearing before him, 
she said that he would be freed from his troubles 
when he came to Lacedaemon; but as soon as he 
arrived there he died. 


180 


The Delay of the Deity 

11. If then the soul has no sensation after death, 
and dissolution is the end of all rewards and punish¬ 
ments, one might rather say that the divinity deals 
kindly and indulgently with the wicked who are 
speedily chastised and die. For if we were to as¬ 
sert nothing more than that as long as they live and 
during the present existence no evil befalls the bad, 
but that when vice is exposed and is seen to be a 
fruitless and barren thing, that it brings nothing 
good or worth an effort, in spite of many severe 
agonies of mind—the recognition of these facts ren¬ 
ders life an uneasy one. A case in point is the story 
told of Lysimachus that under stress of thirst he 
gave up his body and his dominions to the Getae, 
but that when he had got into their hands and re¬ 
ceived a draught he cried out, 4 Shame on my base¬ 
ness for depriving myself of such a kingdom for so 
shortdived a pleasure.’ Yet it is exceedingly diffi¬ 
cult to resist the needs of our physical nature; but 
when a man, either for the sake of money or from 
avidity for political honors or influence, commits a 
lawless and wicked act, and when, after the thirst and 
madness of his passion have been allayed, he finds, 
in the course of time, that the ignominy and the bit¬ 
ter sorrow for his crimes remain behind, and that 
villainy has been neither advantageous nor necessary 
nor profitable, must not the thought, so servile and 
mean, often occur to him, that for empty glory or 
fleeting enjoyment he has trampled under foot the 
dearest and highest rights of mankind, only to fill his 
181 


The Delay of the Deity 


life with shame and confusion. For as Simonides 
jestingly said, that he always found the chest he 
kept for money full and the one he kept for gratitude 
empty; so wicked men, when they examine their 
own evil hearts, discover that for the sake of a pleas¬ 
ure which directly proves to be an empty one, they 
find them void of hope but full of sorrows and pain, 
unpleasant memories, and anxiety for the future, 
but big with distrust of the present. Just as we 
hear Ino crying out in the theater when filled 
with regret for what she had done, 4 Dear women, 
how can I again dwell in the house of Athamas? 
Would that I had done none of the deeds I commit¬ 
ted! ’ So the soul of every villain ought to consider 
well and reflect how it may rid itself of the memory 
of its iniquities and exorcise a bad conscience, under¬ 
go a process of purification and live life over again. 
When the bad is deliberately preferred, it shows a 
lack of confidence and firmness and strength and 
stability—unless, forsooth, we admit that evibdoers 
are a class of sages. Wherever there exists an un¬ 
controllable love of money and pleasure, and insati¬ 
able avarice coupled with malice or a bad character, 
there you will find also, if you look closely, latent 
superstitions and an aversion to labor and fear of 
death and sudden gusts of passion and an eagerness 
to be talked about joined to a penchant for boasting. 
Such men fear those who censure them and are afraid 
of those who praise them as persons who have been 
wronged by deception; they are particularly hostile 
182 


The Delay of the Deity 

to the wicked because they freely praise those who 
have the reputation of being virtuous. For that 
which hardens men in vice is like the brittleness in 
poor iron and is easily shivered. Whence it comes 
that as they, in the course of time, gain a deeper in¬ 
sight into the nature of things, are weighed down 
with sorrow and become morose and abhor their own 
past life. It surely cannot be but that a bad man 
who has restored a trust, or become surety for a friend, 
or who from a love of glory or fame has given and 
contributed something to his country, will forthwith 
regret what he has done, because he is unstable in 
his ways and fickle in his purpose; sometimes per¬ 
sons of this kind, even when applauded in the theaters, 
groan inwardly because the love of money has sup¬ 
planted the love of glory; nor can it be that those 
who have sacrificed men for the attainment of sov¬ 
ereignty or to carry out a conspiracy, as did Apollo- 
dorus, or who have taken away money from their 
friends, as did Glaucus, do not repent, nor hate them¬ 
selves, and do not feel regret for what they have done. 
I, for my part, do not believe, if I may say so, that 
there is need of any god or man to punish the im¬ 
pious, but that their life, ruined and made uneasy by 
vice, is fully sufficient.” 

12. “ Consider, however,” I said, “ whether we are 

not examining the argument at greater length than 
its importance demands.” To this Titnon replied, 
“ It may be, in view of what is yet to come and of 
what has been omitted. For I shall now bring up as 
183 


The Delay of the Deity 

a sort of reserve the final difficulty, since we have in 
a measure worked our way through those that pre¬ 
ceded. What Euripides alleges against the gods 
when he boldly charges them with turning ‘ the trans¬ 
gressions of the parents over to their children,’ this, 
believe me, we also tacitly impute to them as an in¬ 
justice. For, if those who have committed offenses 
have themselves expiated them, there is no further 
need of punishing those who have committed none, 
since it is not just to punish a second time for the 
same crime those who are innocent; or if through 
negligence they have failed to punish the real crimi¬ 
nals, and long after visit the penalty upon the inno¬ 
cent, they do not justly make up for their tardiness 
by injustice. Something of this kind is told of 
Aesop who, it is said, came here (to Delphi) with 
gold from Croesus in order to make a magnificent ob¬ 
lation to the god and to distribute to each of the 
Delphians four minae; but some difficulty arising, as 
it seems, and he having got into a quarrel with the 
parties here, performed the sacrifice but sent the 
money back to Sardis, alleging that the men were not 
worthy to receive it; thereupon they trumped up a 
charge of temple-robbery against him and put him to 
death by hurling him from the rock called Hyampeia. 
For this the god is said to have become incensed at 
them and to have sent a famine upon the land, 
together with all manner of strange diseases; so that 
they went around to the Hellenic festivals proclaim¬ 
ing and making known everywhere that whoever 

184 


The Delay of the Deity 

wished might wreak vengeance upon them for the 
wrong they had done to Aesop. In the third genera¬ 
tion came one Iadmon, a man in no way related to 
Aesop, but a descendant of those who had bought 
him in Samos; and to this man, having in some way 
made satisfaction (for the wrong done to Aesop), the 
Delphians were released from their calamities. 
After that date also, they say, the punishment of 
temple=robbery was transferred to Nauplia from 
Hyampeia. Those who are great admirers of Alex¬ 
ander, of which number we also are, do not commend 
him for destroying the city of the Branchidae and 
putting them all to death, without distinction of age 
or sex, because their forefathers had betrayed the 
temple at Miletus. Agathocles, too, the usurper of 
Syracuse, mockingly told the Corcyreans, in answer 
to the question why he had laid waste their island, 
‘ That it most assuredly was because their fathers had 
kindly received Ulysses.’ To the people of Ithaca he 
likewise replied when they expostulated with him be¬ 
cause his soldiers carried off their sheep, * Your king 
also came to us and even blinded the shepherd.’ And 
is not Apollo even more unreasonable if he is destroy¬ 
ing the present generation of Pheneatae by blocking 
up the barathrum and inundating their entire terri¬ 
tory, because a thousand years ago, as they say, Hercu¬ 
les carried off the prophetic tripod and took it to Phe- 
neus? or when he foretold to the Sybarites a release 
from their ills, whenever they had appeased the 
anger of the Leucadian Hera, by a demolition three 
185 


The Delay of the Deity 


times repeated? And in truth, it is not long since 
the Lacedaemonians ceased to send virgins to Troy 
‘ who without upper garments and with bare feet, 
like slaves, at early dawn swept around the altar of 
Athena, without the wimple, even though old age 
bore heavy upon them,’ on account of the lascivi¬ 
ousness of Ajax. Where, pray, is the logic or justice 
of these things? We do not approve the custom of 
the Thracians, who even at the present day tattoo 
their wives for the purpose of avenging Orpheus, 
nor that of the barbarians along the Po for wearing 
black garments in token of mourning for Pentheus, 
as they say. And it would have been still more ri¬ 
diculous, I think, if the men who lived at the time 
when Phaethon perished had not concerned them¬ 
selves about him, but those who were born five or ten 
generations after his death had begun to change 
their garments for his sake and to put on mourning. 
Nevertheless this is merely silly and has nothing 
pernicious or irremediable about it. But with what 
reason does the anger of the gods sometimes sud¬ 
denly disappear like certain rivers, only to break out 
afterwards against others in order to plunge them 
into the direst misfortunes?” 

13. As soon as he ceased, I, fearing lest he might 
again proceed anew to more and greater absurdities, 
spoke up and asked him: “Very well, but do you accept 
all these things as true?” To which he replied, 
“ Even if not all, but only some of them are true, do 
you not think the question presents the same diffi- 
186 


The Delay of the Deity 

culty? ” “ Perhaps,” said I, “and yet when persons 

are suffering from a high fever, the same or nearly 
the same heat remains whether they have on them 
one or more garments; nevertheless it affords some 
relief (to the patient) to remove what is superfluous. 
Still, if you do not wish to go on, we will let this mat¬ 
ter pass; at any rate, these stories look like fables 
and inventions; remember, however, the festival 
of Theoxenia, recently celebrated, and the honorable 
place the heralds assign to the descendants of Pindar; 
how imposing and delightful the ceremony appeared 
to you. Who would not, I said, be charmed with the 
bestowal of this honor, so entirely in harmony with 
the spirit of Greek antiquity, u nless his 4 black heart 
had been forged with cold flame,’ to use one of Pin¬ 
dar’s own expressions? Then I forbear to mention, I 
said, a proclamation similar to this in Sparta called, 
After the Lesbian Bard, in honor and memory of 
Terpander the Ancient, for the argument is the 
same. And you too, descendants of Opheltas, for¬ 
sooth, claim somewhat more consideration than 
others among the Boeotians and at the hands of the 
Phokians because of Diophantus; besides, you were 
present and were the first to support me when I up¬ 
held the traditional honor of Herakles and the right 
to wear a crown which the Lycormae and the Sati- 
laiae laid claim to; for I said it was altogether proper 
that the descendants of Herakles should enjoy unim¬ 
paired honors and benefits for services which he had 
rendered to the Greeks, but for which he had not 
187 


The Delay of the Deity 

himself received adequate recognition and requital.” 
“ You have recalled to my mind a noble contest,” he 
said, “ and one well worthy of a philosopher.” “ Re¬ 
tract, then, my friend,” said I, “ this serious charge, 
and do not take it ill if the descendants of wicked or 
base men are sometimes punished; or cease to speak 
With approval of the honors conferred upon those 
who are of noble ancestry. For it is incumbent 
upon us, if we are to requite to their descendants, 
the services of their forefathers, as a matter of con¬ 
sistency not to think that punishment ought to 
cease or be discontinued at once after the crime, 
but that it ought to run along with it and render a 
recompense corresponding to it. He w T ho is pleased 
to see the family Kimon honored at Athens, but 
feels sore and aggrieved when the descendants of 
Lachares or Aristo are expelled, is very weak and in¬ 
consistent; or rather, he is captious and hypercritical 
as regards the deity: for he finds fault if the grand¬ 
children of a wicked and unjust man seem to meet 
with good fortune, and he finds fault again, if the 
offspring of the vicious are cut off and blotted out. 
He blames God equally whether the children of a 
good man or a bad man fare ill.” 

14. “ Let these things,” I said, “ serve you as a sort 
of bulwark against those over hasty and carping critics; 
but let us take up again, as one may say, the begin¬ 
ning of the thread of this obscure problem concerning 
the Deity, wfith its many windings and ramifications, 
and let us follow them up with care but without fear, 
188 


The Delay of the Deity 

to what is probable as well as what is reasonable; 
this at least is clear and well established, that even in 
those things which we ourselves do, we cannot al¬ 
ways give the reason. For example, why do we 
direct the children of those who have died of con¬ 
sumption or dropsy to sit with both feet in the 
water until the corpse is buried? for it is believed 
that in this way the disease will not pass to them or 
come near them. Again, for what reason does a 
whole herd of goats stand still if one of their number 
gets eryngo in its mouth, until the herdsman comes 
up and takes it out? And there are other forces in 
nature that interact among each other and pass back 
and forth with incredible swiftness through a great ex¬ 
tent of space. Yet we are surprised at intervals of 
time, but not those of space. With all that, it is 
more wonderful if Athens is infected with a disease 
that had its origin in Ethiopia and of which Pericles 
died and from which Thucydides suffered than if the 
penalty for the crimes committed by the Delphians or 
Sybarites should be carried down to and visited upon 
their children. The forces of nature have certain 
connections, and inter-relations with each other ex¬ 
tending from their farthest endings to their very be¬ 
ginnings, the cause of which, though unknown by us, 
silently produce their proper effects. 

15. And, in truth, the wrath of the gods, when it 
falls upon a whole city, has its justification. For a city 
is a unit and an entirety, just like an animal, that 
does not lose its identity with the passing of the years, 
189 


The Delay of the Deity 

nor is transformed from one tiling into something 
different in the course of time, but is always affected 
by like feelings and has a character peculiar to itself. 
It merits all the praise and all the blame for what it 
has done in its sovereign capacity, so long as the 
community which makes it one and binds it together 
preserves its unity. To make one city, in the course 
of time, consist of many cities, or rather, of a count¬ 
less number, is like dividing one man into many be¬ 
cause he is now older, but was formerly younger, and 
still earlier, a stripling. This is altogether like the 
well-known argument of Epicharmus, the so-called 
increasing syllogism, much used by the Sophists, 
that the man who had incurred a debt some time ago 
does not owe it now as he has become another man, 
and that he who was invited to a banquet yesterday 
comes to-day an unbidden guest because he is another 
person. Advancing age produces greater changes in 
each one of us than in the general character of cities. 
Any one would recognize Athens if he saw it thirty 
years ago; the customs of to-day, the motions, the 
sports, the occupations, the likes and dislikes of the 
people are precisely the same they were in former 
times; but a man whom a relative or a friend might 
chance to meet after an interval of time, he would 
scarcely recognize, and the change of character easily 
seen in every remark and occupation and in the feel¬ 
ings and habits have, even for those who are about us 
all the time, something strange and striking by their 
novelty. Nevertheless a man is regarded as one per- 

190 


The Delay of the Deity 

son from his birth to his death; and in like manner we 
think it right that the city, which remains the same, 
ought to be held responsible for the transgressions of 
its former citizens with the same show of reason that 
it shares in their glory and prestige; otherwise we 
shall, without being aware of it, cast everything into 
the river of Heracleitus into w 7 hich he says nothing 
goes twice because nature keeps all things in motion 
and changes their form. 

16. If then a city is a unit and a continuous thing, 
the same is undoubtedly true of the family that 
springs from one and the same beginning and en¬ 
genders a certain power and a natural bond of sym¬ 
pathy between all its members. That which is begot¬ 
ten is not as if it were the handiwork of an artisan, 
separate from him who begets, for it is something 
that proceeds out of him, not something framed by 
him; consequently it possesses and bears within 
itself some portion of its original that may rightfully 
be chastised or honored^ If I were not afraid I 
should be thought to be jesting I w T ould say that the 
statue of Kasander has suffered a greater wn’ong at 
the hands of the Athenians when it was melted down, 
and the body of Dionysius when after death it was 
carried beyond their boundary by the Syracusans, 
than their descendants in paying the penalty for the 
deeds of these men. For in a statue of Kasander 
there was no part of him, and the soul of Dionysius 
had left the dead body long previously; but in the 
case of Nysaeus and of Apollokrates and of Anti- 
191 


The Delay of the Deity 

pater and of Philip and of all other persons in like 
manner who are the children of vicious parents, 
nature has implanted this predominant principle and 
it is ever present with them; is not dormant or in¬ 
operative, but they live in it and are nurtured by it; 
with them it abides and it directs their actions. It is 
not cruel or unreasonable if the children of these 
men share their destiny. All things considered, here, 
as in the healing art, what is advantageous is just, 
and he would make himself ridiculous who should 
affirm that in diseases of the hipqoint it w T as w T rong 
to cauterize the thumb, and in the case of an ulcer¬ 
ated liver, to make an incision in the belly, and to 
anoint the tips of the horns of cattle if their hoofs 
are soft. So in the matter of punishments; he who 
thinks anything else is just than what will cure vice, 
and is scandalized if the healing is affected on one party 
for the sake of another,—like the opening of a vein to 
relieve the eyes—evidently sees no farther than what 
is plain to the senses. He does not take into ac¬ 
count that even a schoolmaster, when he punishes 
one pupil also corrects others, and that a general 
who decimates his army punishes all his soldiers. 
Likewise, certain qualities, good as well as bad, 
are transmitted not only from one body to an¬ 
other, but even more readily from one soul to an¬ 
other. For in the one case it seems reasonable that 
the same conditions should also produce the same 
change, while in the other, the soul impelled by 
motives and impulses is naturally inclined by 
192 


The Delay of the Deity 

boldness or timidity to become worse or better.” 

17. While I was yet speaking, Olympichus inter¬ 
rupting me, said, “ You seem, in your discourse, to 
proceed on a weighty assumption, namely, the con¬ 
tinued existence of the soul.” “You will surely 
grant this,” I replied, “or rather, have granted it, 
for my argument has proceeded from the beginning 
on the hypothesis that God distributes to us all 
rewards and punishments according to our deserts.” 
Hereupon he replied, “ Do you then think it follows 
of necessity, from the fact that because the gods 
observe all our actions, and apportion rewards and 
punishments, that souls are either altogether incor¬ 
ruptible, or that they continue to exist for some time 
after death?” “My good friends,” said I, “God is 
not impatient, or so occupied with trifles, that if there 
were not something of the divinity in us, something 
at least in a measure similar to Himself, but if, like 
unto leaves, as Homer says, we are altogether transi¬ 
tory, and doomed to perish in a little while, He would 
treat us with so much consideration—like those 
women who plant the gardens of Adonis in frag¬ 
ments of pottery and bestow pains on them—cherish¬ 
ing those ephemeral souls of ours, that dwell in a 
frail body, and when they are sprung up have no 
firm root in life, but are forever extinguished by any 
sudden calamity. But if you are agreed, let us pass 
over the other gods and let us consider ours here (in 
Delphi), whether you think, if he were aware that 
the souls of those who have passed from life, forth- 
193 


The Delay of the Deity 

with dissolve into nothing, like clouds or smoke, as 
soon as they leave the body, he would have instituted so 
many ceremonies for the dead, and would still require 
large gifts and honors for the deceased, merely to 
impose upon and delude the credulous. For my 
part, I could never give up (my faith in) the 
immortality of the soul unless some one should again, 
like another Herakles, take away the tripod of the 
Pythia, and eradicate and destroy the oracle. So long 
as even in our day many such oracular responses are 
rendered, as they say were given to Korax theNaxian, 
it is impious to assert that the soul can die.” Here 
Patrocleas asked, “ What was the response and who 
was this Korax? for to me both the name and the 
circumstance are unknown.” “Not at all,” said I, 
“but I am to blame for using a cognomen instead 
of a name. The man who slew Archilochus in battle 
was called Kalondas, as you know; but he bore the 
eponym, Korax. Repelled at first by the Pythia for 
killing a devotee of the Muses, he next had recourse 
to prayers and humble supplications in order to secure 
his restoration to favor, then was commanded to repair 
to the habitation of Tettix, in order to appease the 
soul of Archilochus. This was at Taenarus, for 
thither, they say, Tettix the Cretan came with his 
fleet, founded a city and settled near an oracle of the 
dead. In like manner, also, an oracle came to the 
Spartans, bidding them conciliate the soul of Pausa- 
nias, persons who could evoke the dead having been 
sent for to Italy; these, after offering sacrifice, 

194 


The Delay of the Deity 

conjured up the ghost of the dead man in the tem¬ 
ple. 

18. This, then is one argument which establishes 
the providence of God and at the same time the 
immortality of the soul, and it is not possible to 
reject the one and accept the other. Now if the soul 
survives after the death of the body, it is also quite 
reasonable that it shares the rewards and punish¬ 
ments (of the latter). For in this life it is engaged 
in a contest, like an athlete, and when the contest is 
ended it receives its deserts. To the rewards and 
punishments meted out when existing there by itself 
(separate from the body) for the deeds of the previ¬ 
ous life, the living attach no importance; they are 
concealed from our knowledge, and discredited. But 
those that are transmitted to children and through 
successive generations, being plainly evident to all 
w T ho live here, turn many bad men from their ways 
and hold them in check. There is no more grievous 
chastisement, and none that reaches more to the quick, 
than for men to see their descendants in misfortune 
on their account; and when the soul of an impious 
and unjust man beholds, after death, not statues over¬ 
turned and honors annulled, but children and friends 
and his own household overwhelmed with calamities 
and paying the penalty for crimes that he has him¬ 
self committed,—there is no one who would again be 
unjust, or who would yield to his unbridled passion, 
for the honors of Zeus. I have also a story to tell 
that I recently heard, but I hesitate to do so lest you 
195 


The Delay of the Deity 


think it a fable, I will therefore keep to what is prob¬ 
able. “ By no means,” said Olympichus, “ but 
repeat it entire.” When the others also joined in 
the request, I said, “ Permit me to repeat what is prob¬ 
able in the story and afterward, if you like, we will 
take up the fable, granting, of course, that it is a 
fable.” 

19. Now Bion says for a god to punish the children 
of bad men would be more ridiculous than if a phy¬ 
sician were to administer medicine to the son or 
grandson, for the disease of the grandfather, or the 
father. In one respect the conditions are unlike, in 
another they are alike, or similar. Administering 
medicine to one man for the disease of another does 
not, it is true, cure the patient, and a person who is 
suffering from a disease of the eyes, or a fever, does 
not get better when he sees another annointed or hav¬ 
ing a plaster put on him; but the punishments of the 
wicked make it evident to all men that it is the pur¬ 
pose of wisely^directed justice to restrain some by 
the correction of others. In what respect the com¬ 
parison made by Bion is pertinent to the inquiry, he 
himself failed to notice; for suppose, now, a man falls 
sick of a painful but by no means incurable disease, 
then gives himself up to intemperance and effeminate 
habits, and dies; and suppose, again, that his son does 
not have the same disease but only a predisposition 
to it,—would not a physician, or a trainer, or even a 
careful master, on learning this fact, put him on a 
frugal diet, and keep him from dainties and pastry, 
196 


The Delay of the Deity 

from drink and women, and by enjoining the con¬ 
tinuous use of remedies and the exercise of the body 
in gymnastics, scatter and eradicate the little germ 
of a big disorder, before it had reached the serious 
stage? Forsooth, do not we admonish those who 
are born of diseased fathers or mothers, to take heed 
to themselves, and to be on their guard against 
neglecting themselves, and forthwith to expel the 
inbred evil while its germ is yet undeveloped, and 
thus take the danger by the forelock? “Most 
assuredly,” said they. “Then,” replied I, “we are 
not doing an absurd but a necessary thing; not 
something ridiculous but something useful, when we 
recommend to the children of epileptics and hypo¬ 
chondriacs and gouty persons, physical exercise and 
wholesome diet and medicaments, not because they 
are sick, but to the end that they may not become 
sick. The body that is born of an unsound body 
does not need chastisement but medical treatment 
and good regimen. If anybody calls the interdiction 
of pleasures and the imposition of toil and labor, 
punishment, he does so because he is inept and 
effeminate, and no attention need be paid to him. 
Shall we say, then, that a body born of an unsound 
body is worthy of care and attention, but the con¬ 
genital seeds of vice that germinate and spring up 
in the young character, we are to let alone and wait 
and dally, until the evil passions break forth openly, 
—‘show forth the malignant fruit of the heart,’ as 
Pindar says? 

m 


The Delay of the Deity 

20. Of a truth, in this matter is the Deity any wiser 
than Hesiod when he exhorts and advises us ‘ Not 
when returned from the sorrowful burial, to propagate 
the race, but after the feast of the immortals?’ on the 
ground that not only vice and virtue, but sorrow and 
joy and all qualities, are transferred to the offspring 
in procreation; that at such a time men should be 
jocund and in good spirits and merry. But it does 
not follow, according to Hesiod, nor is it the work of 
human wisdom, but of God, to see through and 
understand similarities and differences of human na¬ 
ture, before they have led to great crimes and are thus 
made plain to all men. For while the cubs of bears 
and the whelps of wolves and monkeys immediately 
disclose their inborn nature because there is nothing 
to conceal or disguise it, the natural disposition of 
man conforms to customs and opinions and laws, and 
thus frequently puts a mask on what is evil and imi¬ 
tates the good. In this way it altogether expunges 
or eradicates the inborn taint of vice, or hides it for 
a long time by cunningly disguising itself under the 
cloak of virtue; inasmuch as we hardly take note of 
any particular act of villany, unless it falls upon us 
or strikes us; or, rather, we are for the most part 
accustomed to regard men as bad only when they do 
a bad deed, licentious when they indulge their lusts, 
and cowards when they run away. This is doing as 
if we believed scorpions had a sting only when they 
strike, and serpents were poisonous only when they 
bite,—a foolish notion, verily! The man who proves 

198 


The Delay of the Deity 

• * * 

to be a villain does not become so just at the moment 
he is found out, but he had in him from his birth 
the germs of iniquity, the thief merely seizing the 
opportunity or using his power to steal, and the ty¬ 
rant to override the law. But God, depend upon it, 
is not ignorant of the inclinations and nature of any 
man because He looks to the soul rather than the 
body; He does not wait to punish deeds of violence, 
until they are done with the hands, or impurity until 
it is uttered with the tongue, or lasciviousness until 
it is committed with the sexual organs. He does not 
take vengeance on the evibdoer from any wrong he 
has himself suffered, neither is He incensed at the 
robber, because he has been roughly handled, nor 
does He hate the adulterer because of the disgrace; 
yet, for the sake of betterment, He often punishes 
the adulterer and the miser and the unjust man, 
thus cutting off vice, as if it were an epilepsy, before 
it becomes firmly rooted. 

21. A little while ago we expressed our ilk will at 
the late and tardy punishment of the wicked; now we 
find fault because in some cases, even before they 
perpetrate any evil deed, God checks the natural 
bent and disposition of men, though we are aware 
that the future is often worse and more to be feared 
than the past, and what is dormant than what is 
apparent. We are not able to fathom the reasons 
why it is sometimes better to let men commit crimes 
and sometimes better to anticipate them while they 
are merely deliberating and contriving; just as some 
199 


The Delay of the Deity 

medicines are not adapted to certain patients, though 
helpful to others who are not actually sick, and yet 
in a worse condition than the former. For this 
reason the gods do not ‘ turn all the transgressions of 
the parents upon their offspring,’ but if a virtuous son 
is begotten by a wicked father, as it were, a sound 
man, by one who is diseased, he averts the penalty 
from the house, the offspring of one being, so to 
speak, adopted into another. But it is fitting that a 
young man who conforms himself to the likeness of 
a corrupt family should also share the chastisement 
of its villainies as a debt incurred by inheritance. 
Antigonus was not punished on account of Demetrius, 
any more than the heroes of the olden time, 
Phyleus and Nestor, for the sake of Augeas andNeleus; 
since these men, though sprung from wicked fathers, 
were themselves good men. But those who cherish 
and take naturally to the baseness that is born in 
them must also expect to be pursued to the end by 
that justice which the likeness of vice demands. For 
just as warts and livid spots and freckles that fathers 
sometimes have, are not on their sons, but afterwards 
reappear on the grandsons, and granddaughters; and 
a certain Greek woman who had given birth to a 
black child for which she was charged with adultery 
until she proved that she was descended from an 
Ethiopian in the fourth generation; and one of the 
sons of Pytho of Nisibis, who recently died, and who 
was said to be sprung from the Sparti, was born with 
the print of a spear on his body—in which case the 
200 


The Delay of the Deity 

family likeness reappeared and came to the surface 
as out of the deep, after such a long space of time,— 
so in like manner the character and passions of the 
soul are often concealed in the first generations and 
remain unknown, but some time afterward and in 
other persons nature springs up and asserts its 
power, either for virtue or vice.” 

22. When he had spoken thus he held his peace, 
whereupon Olympichus said with a smile, “We do 
not give you our approval lest we shall seem to excuse 
you from telling the story, on the ground that the 
case has been sufficiently proved; but we shall only 
then render our verdict when we have heard that.” 
In this wise I accordingly began: “ Thespesius of Soli, 
a kinsman and friend of the Protagenes who spent 
some time here with us, having passed the first part 
of his life in great dissoluteness, and having speedily 
squandered all his patrimony, now pressed by the 
exigencies of his situation, for some time led a vicious 
life; besides repenting of his bad management, he 
also sought in every way to recover what he had lost, 
and acted just like those libertines who care nothing 
for their wives so long as they are in possession of 
them, but after they are divorced and married to 
other men, basely try to corrupt them. Accordingly, 
by holding aloof from no act of meanness that brought 
either gratification or gain, he acquired in a short 
time not only very great possessions, but also the 
reputation of being a thorough scoundrel. Above all, 
an oracle brought from Amphilochus gave him a bad 
201 


The Delay of the Deity 


name; for having asked the god through a mes¬ 
senger, as we are told, whether he would lead a better 
life in the future, the answer came back that it would 
be better with him after he was dead. And in a 
measure this turned out to be true, not long after. 
For happening to fall on his head from a height he 
lay like one dead from the shock alone, for he had 
received no wound, and on the third day was already 
carried forth for burial. Then all at once recovering 
strength and coming to himself, he showed a most 
astonishing change in his manner of life; for the 
Cilicians know of no man of his time more just in 
dealings between man and man, none more reverent 
toward the gods, none more dreaded by his enemies, 
or more faithful to his friends. Consequently all 
who knew him were eager to hear the cause of this 
transformation, as they thought such an alteration of 
character could not be a mere matter of chance— 
which was in fact the case, as he himself related to 
Protagenes and other equally intimate friends. For 
when he lost consciousness,—(literally, when his 
rational soul left his body)—he at first experienced 
about the same sensation as the result of the change 
that a pilot would feel who should be hurled from a 
ship into the deep; afterwards, having recovered a 
little, he thought he had entirely regained his breath 
and was able to see on every side with his soul 
opened as if it were all one eye. Yet he beheld none 
of the former things, but the objects he recognized 
were stars of immense magnitude at immeasurable 
202 


The Delay of the Deity 

distances from one another, and a radiance proceed¬ 
ing from them, surprising in its brilliancy and color, 
in which his soul moved about with facility just as a 
man in a calm moves a ship in any direction, easily 
and quickly. Though he omitted most of what he 
saw, he said that the souls of the dead, rising from 
below, made flamedike bubbles as they displaced the 
air before them; then, as each bubble noiselessly burst, 
the souls came forth, human in form but of a smaller 
size. Their movements, however, were not alike, 
for some started forth with surprising fleetness and 
darted straight up, while others whirled round in a 
circle just like spindles, and whisking, now upward, 
now downward, with a kind of confused and aimless 
motion, they came to rest only after a long time and 
with great difficulty. Respecting most of the souls, 
however, he was in ignorance as to who they were; but 
recognizing two or three of his acquaintances, he tried 
to approach and address them, yet they neither heard 
him nor were in their right mind, but beside them¬ 
selves and dazed, trying to avoid all notice and in¬ 
tercourse, moving aimlessly about, at first alone by 
themselves, then encountering many who were in a 
like condition, they joined themselves to these, and, 
tossed about in a disorderly manner in all directions, 
they uttered unintelligible cries that sounded like 
mingled screams of lamentation and fear. Others, 
again, were seen at the very summit of the upper air, 
radiant with joy, frequently approaching each other 
with signs of affection, but avoiding the disorderly 
203 


The Delay of the Deity 


ones and testifying their aversion, as he thought, by 
drawing themselves together, but their delight and 
satisfaction, by expanding and extending themselves. 
Here, he said, he recognized the soul of one of his 
kinsmen, though not quite distinctly, for he had died 
when yet very young; but drawing near it saluted 
him with, ‘Hail, Thespesius!’ When he, in sur¬ 
prise, rejoined that his name was not Thespesius, but 
Aridaeus. ‘Formerly, it is true,’ replied the spirit, 
‘ that was thy name, but henceforth it is Thespesius 
(the Divine). For thou didst not die, but through 
the interposition of God art come hither in the full 
possession of thy faculties; the other part of thy soul 
thou hast left behind in thy body, as it were an 
anchor; and let this be a token to thee both, now, 
and henceforth, that the souls of the departed neither 
cast a shadow nor move the eyelids.’ On hearing 
this, Thespesius, who had by this time somewhat 
recovered consciousness, looked and beheld a kind of 
faint line about himself, while the rest were com¬ 
pletely encircled with a radiance and diaphanous, 
though not all in the same manner, for some, like the 
moon in her brightest splendor, had a uniformly 
smooth and even color, while others were marked 
with a kind of spots or faint weals; others again 
were all variegated and strange to look upon; while 
still others were marked with livid fleckings like 
vipers, and some even showed slight scarifications. 
The kinsman of Thespesius explained these things in 
detail (for there is nothing to hinder us from calling 

204 


The Delay of the Deity 

the souls of men by the name they themselves bore 
during life) by reciting that Adrastea, the daughter 
of Necessity and Zeus, had been placed in the highest 
seat as the avenger of all crimes, and that there is no 
wicked man so powerful or so insignificant as to be 
able, either by craft or by force, to escape her. Three 
attendants wait upon her to each of whom has been 
assigned a different mode of inflicting punishment: 
those who are to be chastised while yet in the body 
and by means of the body, swift Poena (Punishment) 
seizes, though in a rather mild way that still leaves 
behind many things needing expiation; those whose 
cure is a matter of greater difficulty on account of 
their vices, the daemon hands over, after death, to 
Dike (Justice), while those that Dike gives up as 
entirely incorrigible, the third and most terrible of 
the attendants of Adrastea, Erinys (the Fury), pur¬ 
sues, and after hounding them as they rush about 
trying to escape her in one way or another, she puts 
them all out of sight in a pitiless and awful way by 
thrusting them into a nameless and invisible abyss. 
Of the other punishments, said he, that inflicted by 
Poena in this life is like those of the nomGrreeks. 
For as among the Persians the clothes and tiaras of 
those who are undergoing chastisement are pulled 
off and they are scourged, while the culprits beg 
with tears that their castigation may be ended; so 
the punishments suffered in body or estate are no 
severe affliction, nor do they touch vice itself, but 
are chiefly for appearance sake and for the outward 
205 


The Delay of the Deity 


sense. But him who comes hither from there, un¬ 
punished and unpurged, Dike seizes and exposes his 
soul in all its nakedness, and there is no place where 
it can hide or go into concealment or cover up its 
baseness, but it is completely seen on all sides and 
by everybody. At first Dike shows this soul to 
honest parents, if such he had, or to ancestors, as a 
detestable creature and unworthy (of such ancestry); 
but if they were likewise wdcked, he sees them under¬ 
going chastisement, while he is in turn beheld by 
them receiving his deserts and expiating, for a long 
time, each of his evil passions with pains and tor¬ 
ments which as far exceed in sharpness those en¬ 
dured in the flesh as the reality exceeds in distinct¬ 
ness the mere vision (before you). The stripes and 
weals for each of the passions remain on some a 
longer, on others a shorter time.” ‘ Observe also,’ 
said he,’ ‘ the variegated and party-colored appear¬ 
ance of the souls; the darkish and filthy hue is the 
mark of fraud and avarice, while the bloodied and 
flame-colored indicates cruelty and ugliness of tem¬ 
per; where the soul has a bluish color, a lack of self; 
control as against lust has not been wholly eradi¬ 
cated from it; inherent malevolence combined with 
envy give out the violet color and festering appear¬ 
ance underneath, just as the cuttle-fish sets free its 
black fluid. For yonder (in the world), vice, when 
the soul is changed by its passions and changes the 
body, occasions a variety of colors, but here (in the 
realm of departed spirits) there is an end of purifi- 
206 


The Delay of the Deity 

cation and punishment, and when the passions are 
purged out, the soul recovers entirely its native luster 
and uniform color. Until this takes place, paroxysms 
of passion break forth, causing relapses and heart- 
throbs, in some cases faint and easily recovered from, 
in others exceedingly violent. Some of the souls, 
after undergoing repeated castigations resume their 
natural character and disposition; others again are 
carried away into the bodies of animals by the force 
and power of ignorance and the innate love of sensual 
gratification; for, owing to the weakness of the 
reasoning faculty and a disinclination to discursive 
thought, one is impelled by its active principle to 
procreation, while another, though lacking an instru¬ 
ment of sensual gratification, yet longs to satisfy its 
desires with worldly pleasures and to attain its ends 
by means of the body, for in this place there is only 
a kind of imperfect shadow and vision of joys that 
can have no reality. When the spirit had thus 
spoken, it conducted him (Thespesius) swiftly through 
boundless space, as he thought, easily and without 
deviation, borne up by the beams of light as if on 
wings, until he came to a wide and deep chasm where 
the power that supported him gave way; he saw, too, 
that the other souls had a like experience at that 
place, for these, crowding together like birds, and 
darting downward, flew about the chasm,—for they 
dared not venture to pass directly across it—which 
he saw was decorated within like the grottoes of 
Bacchus, with shrubbery and plants and with all 
207 


The Delay of the Deity 


sorts of green twigs bearing flowers; it also sent forth 
a gentle and agreeable breeze which was singularly 
pleasant and which produced the same effect that 
wine does on those who are addicted to it, for the 
souls that inhaled these fragrant odors were in 
ecstasies of joy and embraced one another. All 
around this place there was revelry and laughter, to¬ 
gether with every kind of enjoyment and merry¬ 
making. He said that here Dionysus had ascended 
and had afterwards fetched up Semele and that it was 
called the place of Forgetfulness (Lethe). Here, too, 
Thespesius desired to tarry, but his conductor would 
not allow it, and hurried him forcibly away, at the 
same time telling him that the rational soul is melted 
and dissolved under the influence of pleasure, but 
that the irrational and carnal part, moistened and 
clothed in flesh, revives the memory of the body, and 
as a result of this reminiscense, a desire and a con¬ 
cupiscence that incites to procreation; for which 
reason it is called an inclination toward the earth 
because the soul is weighed down with moisture. 
Passing next over another way of equal extent, he 
thought he saw a huge goblet into which streams 
flowed, of which one was of a whiter color than the 
foam of the sea or snow T ; another, purple like the 
iris; while others again showed, from afar, different 
hues, each of which shone with its own particular 
luster, yet when he came near, the ambient air be¬ 
came more and more rarified, the colors became 
fainter, and the goblet lost its brilliant tints, except 
208 


The Delay of the Deity 

the white. Here he saw three supernatural beings 
(daemons) sitting by one another in the form of a 
triangle, mixing together the streams with certain 
measures. The conductor of the soul of Thespesius 
said that to this point Orpheus had advanced when 
he was following after the soul of his wife, but be¬ 
cause his memory partly failed him he brought back 
to men an incorrect account when lie said that the 
oracle at Delphi was the common property of Apollo 
and Night, when in sooth, there is nothing in com¬ 
mon between Apollo and Night. ‘ But this oracle,’ 
the spirit said, ‘is common to night and the moon; it 
gives response nowhere upon the earth and has no 
fixed abode, but roams about everywhere among men, 
in dreams and apparitions; and emanating from it, as 
thou seest, dreams mixed up with the plain and simple 
truth, spread abroad trickery and fraud. But that of 
Apollo thou didst not see,’ it said, ‘ nor wilt thou be 
able to see it, for the earthly part of the soul neither 
strives toward what is higher nor does it release (the 
spiritual part), but it tends downward as long as it is 
joined to the body.’ At the same time the spirit 
leading him (Thespesius) nearer tried to show him 
the light issuing from the tripod which, as he said, 
passed through the bosom of Themis and reached as 
far as Parnassus. Though greatly desiring to see it, 
he was not able to do so because of its brilliancy; 
but as he passed by he heard the shrill voice of a 
woman chanting in verse some other things, and the 
time of his death, as he thought. The supernatural 

209 


The Delay of the Deity 

being (daemon) said it was the Sibyl, and that she 
foretold future events as she was whirled about on 
the face of the moon. Though wishing to hear more, 
he was carried round to the opposite side by the 
rotary motion of the moon and caught but a few 
words; among which was the prediction about Mount 
Vesuvius and the impending destruction of Dicaear- 
chea by fire, and a verse about the reigning emperor, 
thus: 

‘ Though he is good, disease shall end his reign.’ 
Next in order they turned to look upon those who 
were undergoing punishments. From the very first 
they beheld nothing but repulsive and pitiable 
sights; then Thespesius quite unexpectedly came 
upon kindred and acquaintances and former com¬ 
panions who were in terrible sufferings and under¬ 
going horrible torments and pains, and who besought 
him with loud lamentations to have pity on them. 
Finally, he recognized his own father coming up from 
a kind of abyss, all covered with marks and wounds, 
stretching out his hands to him; nor did those who 
directed his castigations suffer him to hold his peace, 
but they compelled him to confess that he had been 
guilty of a base crime against some guests, for their 
gold, by taking them off with poison, and that, 
though the deed was unknown to everybody in the 
world above, it was known to those below’. (He 
also said) that he had already undergone some 
torments, but was being dragged away to suffer 
others. Smitten with fear and horror he durst not 
210 


The Delay of the Deity 

offer supplications and intercessions for his father; 
but wanting to turn about and flee, he no longer 
saw his kind and familiar guide, and felt himself 
urged forward by other beings horrible to look upon, 
by whom he was compelled to pass among and be¬ 
hold the chastisements of others of his acquaint¬ 
ances who had openly led a wicked life, though the 
shade of those who had been punished in the world 
was less greviously tormented than the rest, and not 
in the same way, as they were merely condemned to 
severe toil for the irrational nature and the pas¬ 
sions. On the other hand, those who had worn the 
garb and assumed the name of virtue, but had in 
secret led corrupt lives, were forced by other tor¬ 
mentors, with severe exertion and great pain, to turn 
the inner parts of the soul outward; which action 
being so contrary to their nature, they performed it 
with wrigglings and contortions like those made by 
the marine scolopendra when they have swallowed 
the hook; some, their tormentors flayed and laid 
open in order to show how corrupt and flecked they 
were, and that their iniquity had its root in the 
reason which is the noblest part of the soul. Other 
souls, he also said, he observed coiled about each other 
by twos and threes and even more, gnawing one an¬ 
other on the score of old grudges for the deeds of 
malice they had suffered or commited in life. And 
he noticed further, some lakes alongside of each 
other, one of which was of seething gold, another 
of exceeding cold lead, and still another of hard iron; 

211 


The Delay of the Deity 

that over these stood certain demons who in turn, 
like smiths, seized with tongs the souls of those who 
had been guilty of insatiable greed and avarice, 
drawing them out and thrusting them in. When 
they had become heatedjthrough and diaphanous in 
the gold from the effects of the burning, they were 
plunged into the sea of lead; having become con¬ 
gealed here and hard as hailstones, they were next 
thrust into the lake of iron, where they turned com¬ 
pletely black, and were then twisted round and 
round because of their harddieartedness, and rubbed 
together until they lost all semblance of their for¬ 
mer selves. They were then put once more into 
the lake of gold to undergo, as he said, awful tor¬ 
ments by the change. But he said those endured 
the keenest anguish, who, supposing they had been 
released by Justice (Dike) were seized anew: these 
were the souls of those for whose trangressions 
their descendants or children had to pay the penalty. 
For whenever one of these arrived and encountered 
the other, he fell upon the shade in great wrath, 
uttering loud cries and showing the marks of what 
he had endured, at the same time execrating and 
pursuing it while it endeavored to flee away and hide 
itself, yet could not. For swiftly did the avengers of 
justice pursue such, dragging them back again amid 
loud lamentations because they foreknew their im¬ 
pending doom. To some of the souls, he said, many 
of their decendants at the same time attached them¬ 
selves like bees or bats, uttering shrill cries and 
212 


The Delay of the Deity 

falling into transports of rage at the recollection of 
what they had endured for their sakes; and last of 
all he saw the souls of those who were undergoing 
the preparation for a second birth by a forced trans¬ 
formation into all sorts of animals, and by metem¬ 
psychosis at the hands of those who were appointed 
to the task. These, by the use of certain tools, and 
with blows, hammered together entire members, 
turned others round, scraped down or removed others 
entirely in order to adapt them to different modes of 
life, among which also appeared the soul of Nero 
that had already undergone the other castigations, 
and had been transfixed with red-hot nails. When the 
workmen had begun to prepare the figure of a Pin¬ 
daric viper, in which it was destined to live after it 
had been conceived and had eaten its way out of its 
mother, he said that a great light appeared and a 
voice came out of the light commanding that it be 
transformed into some more gentle creature and 
made over into an animal that is wont to chant 
around marshes and ponds, as he had already ex¬ 
piated his crimes, and some consideration was due 
him at the hands of the gods for freeing Greece, the 
land in which dwelt the best and most god=favored of 
his subjects. Thus far now Thespesius was an eye¬ 
witness; but when he was about to turn back, he got 
into the utmost perplexity through fright; for a 
woman, imposing by her stature and beauty, taking 
hold of him, said, ‘ Pray come hither, my friend, in 
order that you may the better remember everything ’ 
213 


The Delay of the Deity 


(you have seen). And as she was about to apply to 
him a little red-hot iron rod such as the painters 
in encaustic are wont to use, another woman inter¬ 
fered. But he himself was carried away all at once 
by a sudden and very violent gust of wind, as if 
blown through a tube, and so lighting again in his 
own body, he was restored to life, as it were, on the 
very brink of the grave.” 


NOTES. 

A few notes of general character are here ap¬ 
pended. Biographical and mythological details may 
be found in classical dictionaries. They are, however, 
rarely necessary to make clear the object of the 
author’s allusions. A word or a phrase not in the 
original has, in a few cases, been inserted in the 
translation to preclude the necessity of a note. 

Too deioo of the title. It is not clear from the writings of 
Plutarch to what extent he was a monotheist. He uses 0ed? 
both with and without the article. In some cases his mean¬ 
ing is perfectly clear; in others not. The New Testament 
writers, whose monotheism is beyond question, frequeutly use 
the article before the name of God. In like manner proper 
names sometimes have the article and sometimes are without 
it. Thus we have I1aoXo<$ and 6 flaoXo ?, FhXaros usually has 
the article while TYro? never has it, etc. 

Chap. 3. The thought here expressed regarding the mills of 
the gods has been put into the form of a couplet by Longfel¬ 
low in his Poetic Aphorisms, thus: 

“ Though the mills of God grind slowly 
yet they grind exceeding small; 

Though with patience He stands waiting, 
with exactness grinds He all.” 

214 



The Delay of the Deity 


The purport of the passage is plain, but the parallelism 
between the fact and the figure is not very close. The idea is 
much older than Plutarch. 

Chap. 4. “ The ingle=side ” or ancestral hearth. Accord¬ 
ing to the ancients the hearth was the center and beginning of 
the family and the state. The expression, which is often 
used by Plato and others, is equivalent to the remotest begin¬ 
ning. Compare also the Roman Vesta. 

5. “ God having placed Himself,” etc. The following ex¬ 
tract from the Timaeus of Plato will serve to illustrate our 
author’s meaning. “ Let me tell you then why the Creator 
made this world of generation. He was good, and the good 
can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free 
from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like 
himself as they could be. This is in the truest sense the 
origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do well in be¬ 
lieving on the testimony of wise men. God desired that all 
things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was 
attainable. Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere 
not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, 
out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in 
every way better than the other. Now the deeds of the best 
could never be or have been other than the fairest and best; 
and the Creator, reflecting on the things which are by nature 
visible, found that no unintelligent creature taken as a whole 
was fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole; and that in¬ 
telligence could not be present in anything which was devoid 
of soul. For which reason, when he was framing the uni¬ 
verse, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he 
might be the creator of a work which was, by nature, fairest. 
Wherefore, using the language of probability, we may say that 
the world became a living creature, truly endowed with soul 
and intelligence by the providence of God.” 

6. “ Souls going forth from him.” The idea here is, that 
the human soul existed previous to its incarnation in the hu¬ 
man body, and that it is a direct emanation from the Deity. 
This doctrine is fully expounded by Plato. How to establish 
the immortality of the soul, if it comes into existence with the 
body, was a serious problem with the ancients. Plutarch 

215 


The Delay of the Deity 


seems to have regarded both the soul and the body as eternal 
and uncreated, but the latter without form until it was united 
with the soul. Or we may put the case otherwise by saying 
that the soul, upon entering into a conscious existence, shapes 
the hitherto formless body into an abode for itself. He also 
holds that the soul consists of two parts: The one part seeks 
after truth and has an affection for the beautiful; the other is 
subject to the passions and under the dominion of error. 
“ For which reason,” the author here assumes that the words 
s do 9 and r]0o<s are from the same root. The former means, use 
and wont; the latter was originally applied; to the haunts or 
abodes of animals; then the manners, habits, and dispositions 
of men. Aristotle says, ij S' rjdurj eOou<$ neptyivsTac, oOsv xat 
Toovopa eff%7]xe fitxpbv i xepixXivov too too r)dou$. (Ethical is 
from £ 009 , for which reason the word differs but slightly from 
rjOo$.) Plutarch himself says that custom is second nature. 
It is easy to trace the connection between a man’s acts and the 
psychical forces, the character, that produces them. 

8 . “ An ill=omened deed.” It was a prevalent belief in 
antiquity that misfortunes fell upon those who were concerned 
in disturbing a swallow’s nest. 

10. Near the end. The Greeks ventured to consult oracles 
of the dead only on rare and extraodinary occasions. They 
probably borrowed the custom from the East. 

11. The story of Glaucus is told at length by Herodotus in 
the third book of his history and is often alluded to by later 
writers. The ethical import of the anecdote is far»reaching. 

17. “ Gardens of Adonis.” Shakespeare probably had these 
in mind when he wrote (King Henry VI. Part 1, scene sixth): 
“ Thy promises are like Adonis’gardens, That one day bloomed 
and fruitful were the next.” At Taenarus, the most southern 
point of the Peloponnesus, there was believed to be an entrance 
to the lower world. 

22. “ None more dreaded by his enemies.” To return good 
for good and evil for evil was a fundamental article of Greek 
ethics. It is more than once alluded to in the Anabasis, and is 
found in nearly all Greek writers. Socrates, however, takes a 
firm stand against the principle and maintains that whatever 

216 


The Delay of the Deity 

is intrinsically wrong can never under any circumstances be¬ 
come right. 

“An inclination toward the earth.” The author here as¬ 
sumes that yiveai?, procreation, beginning, is both in fact and 
etymologically, connected with veuo-*? in) an inclination 
or tendency toward the earth. It need hardly be said that his 
idea is pure fancy. 

This eruption of Vesuvius, as is well known, took place in 
the year 79. Decaearchea or Puteoli was one of the cities 
destroyed together with Herculaneum, Pompei and others. 
Vespasian was one of the few Roman emperors, who, up to his 
time, died a natural death. 

What is meant by a Pindaric viper is not known. Plutarch 
is evidently of the opinion that its young gnaw their way out 
of the mother’s womb instead of being born in the natural 
way, and the allusion to Nero’s treatment of his mother is 
plain. Nero’s love for music and his proficiency in the musical 
art are evidently held up to ridicule in this passage. 


217 


APPENDIX. 

A list of Plutarch’s works in the order of Bernardakis’ edition. 

Lipsiae, 1888—96. 

Volume I. 

De liberis educandis, (On the education of children). 

Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat , (How a young man 
ought to hear poems). 

De recta ratione audiendi, (How one ought to hear lectures). 

Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur, (How one may distin¬ 
guish a flatterer from a friend). 

Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus , (How one may 
know whether he is making progress in virtue). 

De capienda ex inimicis utilitate, (How one may profit by his 
enemies). 

De amicorum multitudine , (On the abundance of friends). 

De fortuna , (On good and ill fortune). 

De virtute et vitio, (On virtue and vice). 

Consolatio ad Apollonium, (Consolation for Apollonius). 

De tuenda sanitate proecepta, (Precepts on the preservation of 
health). 

Conjugalia proecepta, (Precepts on matrimony). 

Septemsapientum convivium, (The banquet of the seven sages). 

De superstitione, (On superstition). 

Volume II. 

Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata , (Memorable sayings of 
kings and commanders). 

Apophthegmata Laconica, (Memorable sayings of Spartans). 

Instituta Laconica , (The ancient customs of the Lacedaemonians). 

Laccenarum apophthegmata, (Memorable sayings of Spartan 
women). 

Mulierum virtutes, (Heroic deeds of women). 

AEtia Romana, (A list of topics, Roman). 

AEtia Groeca, (A list of topics, Greek). 

Parallela Groeca et Romana, (A collection of Greek and Roman 
historical parallels). 

De fortuna Romanorum , (On the good fortune of the Romans). 

De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute, oratio I et II, (On the 
good fortune or valor of Alexander the Great, discourses I 
and II). 

Bellone an pace clariores fuerint Athenienses, (Were the Athen¬ 
ians more distinguished in war or in wisdom)? 

De Iside et Osiride, (Concerning Isis and Osiris). 

218 


Appendix 


Volume III. 

De E apud Delphos, (On the E at Delphi). 

De Pythia oraculis , (On the cessation of the Pythian oracles in 
meter). 

De defectu oraculorum, (On the cessation of oracles). 

An virtus doceri possit, (Can virtue be taught) ? 

De virtute morali, (On moral virtue). 

De cohibenda ira, (On the control of the temper). 

De tranquillitate animi, (On peace of mind). 

De fraterno amove, (On fraternal love). 

De amove prolis, (On the love of offspring). 

An vitiositas ad infelicitatem sufficiat, (Does vice of itself make 
men unhappy)? 

Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores, (Are the sufferings 
of the mind more grievous than those of the body)? 

De garrulitate, (On talkativeness). 

De curiositate , (On meddlesomness). 

De cupiditate divitiarum, (On the love of riches). 

Devitiosopudore, (On excess of modesty). 

De invidiaet odio, (Concerning envy and hatred). 

De se ipsum citra invidiam laudando, (On praising one’s self with¬ 
out reproach). 

De sera numinis vindicta, (Concerning those whom God is slow 
to punish). 

Defato, (On fate). 

De genio Socratis, (On the tutelary deity of Socrates). 

De exilio , (On exile). 

Consolatio ad uxorem, (A letter of condolence to his wife). 

Volume IV. 

Questionum convivialium libri IX, (Nine books of table-talk). 
Amatorius, (A dialogue on love). 

Amatoriae narrationes, (Love stories). 

Volume V. 

Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum , (On the 
proposition that the philosopher ought chiefly to converse 
with rulers). 

Ad principem ineruditum , (To an uneducated ruler). 

An seni res publica gerenda sit, (Should an old man hold a public 
office)? 

Praecepta gerendae rei publicae, (Political precepts). 

De unius in re publica dominations, populari statu et paucorum 
imperio, (On monarchy, democracy, and oligarchy). 

De vitando aere alieno, (On avoiding debts). 

X oratorum vitae, (The lives of the ten orators). 

219 


Appendix 


De comparatione Aristoplianis et Menandri epitome (Abstract of 
a comparison between Aristophanes and Menander). 

De Herodoti malignitate , (On the malice of Herodotus). 

De placitis philosophorum libri V, (Five books of maxims of the 
philosophers). 

Aetia physica, (Problems in physics). 

De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet. (Concerning the face that 
appears on the moon’s disk). 

De pr'imo frigido. (On the origin of cold). 

Volume VI. 

Aquane an ignis sit utilior , (Is fire or water the more useful) ? 

Terrestriane an aquatilia animalia sint callidiora, (Are water or 
land animals the more cunning) ? 

Bruta aminalia rations uti, (On the use of reason by brutes). 

De esu carnium, orationes duo , (On the eating of flesh, two dis¬ 
courses). 

Platonicae quaestiones, (Platonic questions). 

De animae procreatione in Timaeo , (On the origin of the soul in 
the Timaeus). 

Epitome libri de animae procreatione in Timaeo , (Abstract of the 
book on the origin of the soul in the Timaens). 

De Stoicorum repugnantiis, (On contradictions of the Stoics). 

Compendium libri cui argumentum fuit , Stoicos absurdiora poetis 
dicere , (Synopsis of the book the argument of which was, The 
Stoics utter greater absurdities than the poets). 

De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos , (Concerning the com¬ 
mon conceptions against the Stoics). 

Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum , (That it is not pos¬ 
sible to live pleasurably according to Epicurus). 

Adversus Coloten, (Against Colotes). 

An recte dictum sit latenter vivendum esse, (Is it a true saying 
that one ought to live in seclusion) ? 

De musica , (On music). 


Volume VII. 

Defluviorum et montium nominibus et de Us quae in illis inveniun- 
tur, (On the names of rivers and mountains and those things 
that are found in them). 

De vita et poesi Homeri, Lib. I et II, (On the life and poetry of 
Homer). 

The two treatises last named fill more than one=third of the 
volume, the remainder being chiefly taken up with fragments, 
some of them only a few lines in length. It also contains the 
so-called catalogue of Lamprias which, including the Parallel 
lives, assigns 227 different works to Plutarch. Volume seven con¬ 
cludes with an index of names. As these treatises are usually 

220 


Appendix 


cited by their Latin titles, they only are given above. A com¬ 
plete edition of Plutarch’s Morals, with an introduction by R. W. 
Emerson was published in Boston about twenty=five years ago. 
under the editorial supervision of Professor Goodwin of Har¬ 
vard University. The translations were made by a number of 
English scholars near the close of the seventeenth century. In 
their revised form they are in the main correct and some of them 
are vigorous and readable. 


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